


Gotta Get Myself Back Home Soon

by chchchchcherrybomb



Series: One of a Kind [10]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Alcohol, Bisexual Zoe Murphy, Break Up, Clones, Dropping out of college because you can't handle your emotions, Drug Abuse, Drug-Induced Sex, F/F, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hospitalization, Loss of Parent(s), Mental Health Issues, Original Character(s), Original character clones - Freeform, Past Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Suicidal Thoughts, Zoe finally knows about Clone Club, Zoe is very angry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-05 15:56:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 43,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14622063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chchchchcherrybomb/pseuds/chchchchcherrybomb
Summary: Nobody was surprised when Zoe withdrew from school after both of her parents died. Her professors understood and her advisor said that she should take care of herself and come back when she was ready. She had thought, honestly, when she dropped out that she would be back in the fall. She’d handle her shit and be back in Vermont by September in the house with her friends and Hannah. If things went smoothly, she'd be back to her old self again by the time the summer ended.Things didn’t go smoothly.





	1. Everybody Lost Somebody

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so so so so so much to Rose, mother of this whole One of a Kind universe, for letting me drop this angst bomb on you and telling me it was a good idea. :)

The girl’s name was Sammy. Her hair was so long it practically touched her butt. It was also purple. It was extremely hot.

Zoe took herself out for a drink that night. She needed to keep from thinking. Thinking was stupid and it made her cry, so she went for a drink in a bar that didn’t card.

To keep her mind off of the fact that her mom was dead. Her dad was dead.

To keep her mind off of the fact that she had left her old life in Vermont but also her old life back home. Zoe didn’t have a life she recognized now. She didn’t have people she recognized either.

But she did have new people. Like Sammy.

Which was how she found herself, five vodka martinis into the evening, letting a girl named Sammy with a septum piercing and purple hair flirt with her.

And two martinis later, Zoe let Sammy pull her into the unisex bathroom and lock the door. She let Sammy present her with an oblong white pill, which Sammy crushed up and cut into a line which Zoe snorted using a rolled up dollar bill.

She’d never snorted anything before. Other than nose spray.

It made her cough and then gag and then…

It hit her fast.

And Zoe grabbed Sammy’s hips roughly and pulled her in for a hard kiss.

Sammy shoved her hand down Zoe’s pants, into her underwear, touching her in a way that suggested this was not the first time she’d done something like this.

It was scary for Zoe, because before, she never would have done this either

Zoe from before was careful. She asked questions. She didn’t get drunk or take drugs from strangers. Or take drugs at all. She saw how messed up they’d made Connor and vowed to stay the fuck away.

But then both of her parents died so Zoe threw that fucking rule book out the window.

Sammy was good with her hands. She made Zoe come twice.

It was fantastically mind numbing.

So Zoe decided to try it again the next night. And the next.

* * *

Nobody was surprised when Zoe withdrew from school after both of her parents died. Her professors understood and her advisor said that she should take care of herself and come back when she was ready. She had thought, honestly, when she dropped out that she would be back in the fall. She’d handle her shit and be back in Vermont by September in the house with Mitch, Max, Sarah, and Hannah.

Things didn’t go smoothly.

Because Zoe felt nothing. Just nothing.

She woke up screaming a lot, brain full of images of her mom’s blood staining her shirt, Connor’s empty eye socket…

Zoe couldn’t picture herself going back to campus. She couldn’t imagine moving into that house with her friends, trying to pretend like she was normal.

She spent the summer in her parents’ house because she had nowhere else to stay. She ended up hiring a realtor to sell the place and all of the furniture. She had inherited a lot of money from her parents. Her dad had a massive nest egg and Zoe had a trust fund, and their life insurance policies paid out a hefty sum.

Zoe couldn’t go back to school.

She paid her share of the rent up front and told the others she wouldn’t be coming to live

there. To use her room for an office or sublet it for money. She didn’t care. She couldn’t come.

Hannah had been upset. “I get it if school is too much right now,” She had said, her face sad pale and sad. “But I don’t… where are you going to go?”

“I got an apartment,” Zoe said, shrugging.

“I don’t want you to be alone… I’m worried about you.”

Zoe broke up with her then. She just… couldn’t handle that. She couldn’t look at her without seeing the DYAD swipe card she used to wear around her neck.

“My parents were both killed by the company you worked there and now that’s all I see when I look at you.”

Hannah started to cry. “Zoe, please.”

“We’ve been together for, like, maybe seven months?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I didn’t even… I didn’t know this was going to be serious when we got together, and this is. Too much. I’m sorry.”

She left Hannah crying in a restaurant, leaving money on the table for their food and the check for the rent on the house.  

* * *

 

“Zoe open up.”

Zoe squeezed her eyes closed.

She was hungover. Or something. She’d gone out last night. Crawled into bed at like… nine AM? There had been a boy over and she threw him out a little while ago and she just needed to sleep.

“Zoe.” The pounding on the door didn’t stop.

She wished he would just leave her alone. That he would go back to being dead or at least stop acting like they were family. They weren’t and the only people who thought they were were dead so she just wanted him to go away.

Traitor had gotten back together with Evan like. Without hesitation.

Evan got their mom killed, got their dad killed.

Traitor.

She pulled the blankets on her bed over her head and willed herself not to hear him knocking. She hated him she hated him she hated him.

“You can’t keep ignoring me,” Connor’s voice said. “I’m worried about you. It’s been three months, Zo, you have to talk to me eventually.”

She didn’t actually.

She should have gotten a place with a doorman. Showed them a photo of literally any clone and demanded they not be allowed up to see her.

“I’m not leaving until you at least let me know you’re alive.”

Zoe growled, pulling the blankets off of her. She stormed out into the living room in the big t-shirt she had worn to bed, not giving a shit, she didn’t care she didn’t care she didn’t care.

“What do you want?” She asked, throwing the door open.

Connor stared back. He had two eyes again, totally healed, exactly the same as they were before down to the spot of brown. You’d never know to look at him what had happened.

Zoe hated him.

“Shit, Zoe… you look like shit.”

She stared. “Cool, is that all? I’ve got other things to be doing-” She went to close the door, but Connor grabbed her arm. She yelped. “Get off me.”

“What’s wrong with your arm?” Connor demanded.

Zoe didn’t honestly know. She might have fallen. Or had the guy she brought home grabbed her? She shrugged, looking at her arm. There was a bruise.

“I don’t want you here,” She said, but Connor had waltzed right in because he always did just whatever it was that he wanted.

“This place is a wreck,” he said, looking around at the mess she had made of the living room. She should clean. Or hire someone to clean it for her. She could afford to have her house cleaned everyday for the rest of her life if she wanted. There was more than enough money for that. “Did you throw a party?”

She had, like… a few weeks ago. And it wasn’t a party as much as she brought home like… half of the bar.

Not bad for someone who wouldn’t even be 21 for another eight months.

“I didn’t invite you in,” She said, “Aren’t vampires not allowed to just come barging into your place?”

“You’re mixing up your monsters,” Connor mumbled. “You look like hell. When’s the last time you ate something?”

She thought she might have had some pizza the night before. And decided she didn’t need to answer any of her traitor brother’s questions. “Get out.”

“Evan heard from Hannah that you just dumped her out of the blue? And dropped out of school?” Connor said, his voice doing a passable impression of concern. “Come on, that’s not like you. What can I do?”

“You could get out?” Zoe said. “I think I made it pretty clear I don’t want to see any variety of your face again. You’re all assholes.” She reconsidered this for a second. “Except Gus. But he’s still got your face, so he can fuck off too.”

“Zoe.”

“You wanted to see that I was alive. Well. Here you go. Tada, I’m breathing. Now get the fuck out.”

He sighed and started to head toward the door. “You’re scaring me,” Connor said, and he did, to his credit, actually look scared.

“Good,” She said. “Now you know how it feels.”

She slammed the door in his face.

Then she looked around at her disaster of an apartment.

If this were six months ago, Zoe would break down crying. She would scream, she would break shit, she would lose her everloving mind.

But if it were six months ago, her parents would be alive and Connor would still be dead and she’d have Hannah and Evan.

She thought back to the drunken night in Quebec when she thought someone who looked like Connor had hit on her. She realized now it was probably just another clone. She couldn’t believe how many there were and how closely DYAD had spaced them out geographically. She knew of at least ten in North America alone. It was like DYAD just loaded up a t-shirt gun and fired at random.

It was a miracle the whole clone conspiracy wasn’t exposed long before this Spring. Everywhere you turned there was another poor asshole with her brother’s face.

Zoe went back to bed.

* * *

 

Connor didn’t come around again for a while. She never gave him her new phone number, so he could only get in touch if he showed up.

She’d told a neighbor who complained about the racket the last time he had showed his ugly face outside her to call the cops if he showed up again. She said he was a psycho.

Zoe spent a lot of her days sleeping now.

But she couldn’t do that today because she actually caved and decided that her place was disgusting and something had to be done about it.

She had tried to do it herself. She wasn’t such a spoiled little rich girl that she couldn’t clean her own messes.

But then she knocked over a box of baby photos from her parents’ house and decided to drink half a bottle of tequila about it.

So today she had cleaners coming in. She’d left them strict instructions that the boxes of photos were to be put into storage in the hall closet and added on a big tip for the mess she was leaving them to tidy.

She just didn’t have the energy for that kind of thing anymore.

She went out, armed with a book and a plan to get some coffee and maybe go to the grocery store. Live like a human being, just a little. She needed more booze anyway.

She just didn’t care. It was remarkable how little she cared. It didn’t even register that she’d gone out in days old makeup with greasy hair, wearing dirty jeans until she was enveloped in an unexpected hug at Starbucks.

From Deborah, one of the ladies from her mom’s grief group.

Everyone knew her parents were dead now.

This is exactly what she didn’t want. “Sweetheart, how are you hold up?”

Zoe shrugged, gesturing to her dirty clothes and dirty hair and laughed. “I’m spectacular, Deb. Don’t I look it?”

“Oh, honey, I can’t even imagine what you’re going through…”

“You’re right,” Zoe said. “You can’t.” She took her coffee to go, leaving Deborah in a Starbucks while Zoe contemplated what to do.

She went to a park for a while. She read something about depression and nature once, in high school, and thought that maybe that was why Evan spent so much time outside.

Zoe wasn’t depressed though. She was just blank. Nothing. She didn’t feel much of anything.

She gave up on her little outing after maybe four hours. She was not in the mood to have people stare at her or chance anymore run ins with the grief group ladies. They used to sit in the kitchen at the old house sometimes, encouraging her mom to get involved so she didn’t get swallowed up whole by her sadness.

Was that what this was? Zoe wondered sometimes.

She just assumed, stupidly, that sadness would feel… you know. Sad.

She got home as the last of the cleaning crew was packing up her mop. The place was dazzlingly clean. It smelled vaguely of bleach and pine scented cleaner, and everything was perfectly in order.

“Is good, yes?” The last lady remaining asked. “You like?” She had a thick accent. Russian maybe. She was younger than Zoe expected. Whenever her mom had professionals in, they were always in their fifties and usually they were Latina.

“Yes. Very good,” She said, trying to smile. It didn’t sit right on her face. Zoe didn’t bother being embarrassed about the fact that she had had to pay this woman to clean up after her. She just said thank you.

“You are welcome.”

“Are you Russian?” Zoe asked.

The woman frowned, clearly uncomfortable. “Ukrainian.”

Zoe nodded, smiling. “My brother’s from the Ukraine.”

The woman stared. Like Zoe was lying. Which she was, kind of. Gus wasn’t her brother anymore than Connor was. She was just making conversation.

This lady looked about as bad as Zoe felt. She looked… worn down. Tired. Like the world had chewed her up and spit her out. She probably wasn’t much older than Zoe was; twenty-five at the oldest. Zoe wondered how many houses she cleaned every day. How many hours she worked. Heidi had been working upwards of sixty hours each week when Evan was in high school, not even counting the classes she took.

“He’s adopted,” Zoe explained.

She nodded.

“Have good night.”

“Wait,” Zoe said.

“Sorry. Is problem?”

“Not at all,” Zoe said. “You.. the place looks wonderful. I was wondering, do you have a card? I could ask for you, next time I need someone?”

“No card,” She said, shaking her head. “You call same number. Yes?”

“Your name then?” Zoe asked, trying to smile. “So I can ask for you?”

She smiled, almost. “Sveta.”

“I’m Zoe.”

Sveta nodded. “Have good evening.”

“You too.”

If Zoe was still speaking to anyone, she might have texted them to say she had made an idiot of herself in front of her Ukrainian cleaning lady, calling Gus her brother and asking for her name. That might be nice, be normal. To talk about it.

She wasn’t speaking to anyone though.

So she said nothing.

And went to her bedroom. It was tidied up nicely; fresh sheets on the bed, bed made up with hospital corners. The walls are still bare; no pictures or prints or posters. She didn’t have it in her to decorate. Zoe didn’t want to ruin the hard work done to make her room look so spotless, so she dumped her dirty jeans into the hamper and headed to the living room. She pulled off the afgan from the back of the sofa, curled up under it, and fell asleep to the sounds of the 5:00 news giving an update on a lawsuit moving forward against the DYAD Institute, “formerly a big name in genetic research that imploded earlier this year after several scandals about human cloning went public…”

 

* * *

Zoe was thankful that her bathroom had been cleaned, considering that she spent an entire Sunday lying on the the bathroom floor.

She felt sick.

Sick. She drank too much the night before. Mixed the booze with pills and honestly it had been awesome.

If she didn’t hate Connor she might have told him she suddenly understood the whole oxy thing from high school. She’d never been so relaxed. It was awesome.

Except now she felt like garbage that had been microwaved.

When she was little and Zoe got sick, her mom would always make her toast. It was weird, and honestly Zoe sort of hated it because then she always got crumbs all over her bedsheets.

Sometimes, she and Connor would get each other sick too. It was something that always happened, but it also was sort of nice not to have to suffer alone.

They both had a nasty stomach flu one Christmas, and Zoe remembered crying because her mom had tried to put her in a onesie and Zoe was scared she wouldn’t be able to get out of it to use the bathroom. But all of her other PJs were dirty, so Zoe ended up in a borrowed pair of Connor’s Spider-Man PJs. She knew he was sick because he didn’t throw a fit over it.

Connor hated sharing.

But he didn’t complain.

Their parents wrapped them both in blankets and set them up on the sofa in front of kid’s Christmas movies. Half way through _The Santa Clause,_ Connor fell asleep on her. Literally on her, head on her shoulder, breathing heavily. Zoe thought it sucked because her shoulder went stiff… but she fell asleep against him too, having to be woken up later that day to finally open presents.

Lying on the floor now, Zoe wished she someone to fall asleep on. She wished somebody would bring her toast. Crumbs in the bed sounded like an okay trade off for having somebody to look after her.

Hannah had taken care of her a few times when she was hungover. Hannah never got hungover, not really. She always drank water and paced herself while drinking. Zoe didn’t know how to do that. She never learned.

She never learned.

But once, right after they got together, Hannah took care of Zoe when she was hungover. She brought her gatorade, and climbed into bed beside Zoe, stroking her hair and turning on some terrible reality television.

* * *

Zoe hired Sveta to clean her place once every two weeks. She tried not to let it fall into the same level of disgusting, because frankly that was embarrassing. But she didn’t have a whole lot of energy so certain things just never managed to get clean unless Sveta came by. Like her shower. The bathroom wasn’t properly ventilated and always seemed on the brink of a mold outbreak.

It probably didn’t help that when Zoe managed to bathe, she usually took hour long baths in scalding water until her skin pruned and the water went icy. She played this game where she tried to hold her head under the layers of bubbles until her lungs burned and she had to come up for air.

She never saw anyone anymore unless she was out drinking. So seeing Sveta sometimes was kind of nice. Zoe wondered what this woman thought of her.

Zoe thought she looked like she was having a breakdown in slow motion.

Maybe Sveta thought she was just an idiot who was too sensitive. People died. Other people didn’t. Whatever. It happened.

Zoe was always trying to stand out from the parade of other lazy white people who hired underpaid maids. She didn’t even know why. It didn’t really matter what Sveta thought about her. They weren’t friends.

Zoe didn’t have friends anymore. She only had like five numbers in her phone right now, and two of them were for people who would sell her drugs.

She had dabbled with oxy for a little bit there. Just like her traitor brother. She was curious what all the fuss was about.

It made her relax. And also a bit tired.

Which helped, because the first few months she kept waking up screaming.

Before she broke up with Hannah she woke her up screaming a lot, thinking her hands were covered in blood. Dried blood, like she had been the night that she went to the safe house, driving as the sun was coming up, Connor unconscious beside her in her dad’s car. She found blood under her fingernails for days after that. She couldn’t get it out. Every time she washed her hands for days, the water would run a rusty color and Zoe would feel sick.  

Zoe wondered humorlessly if she could hire Sveta to clean that up for her. Were there maid services for the mind?

“How old are you?” She asked Sveta one week, having come home early.

“Twenty four.”

“When did you come to the U.S.?”

Sveta’s face went blank. “Fourteen.”

Zoe felt like an asshole for asking, suddenly.

“I get GED and start to work cleaning when I am twenty,” Sveta said, her voice steely. “After my Sofia was born.”

“Your daughter?”

Sveta nodded. “I want her to have… American-sounding name.” She shrugged. “She is small, still.”

“It’s a lovely name,” Zoe said kindly.

“You want pictures?” Sveta said, smiling now. She pulled out an old iPhone, swiping until she had a picture of an adorable little kid, maybe about four years old, with blond curls in a pair of leggings and a tutu.

“She’s adorable.”

“Smart, also. She knows all the letters.” Sveta was smiling widely. She looked younger when she smiled. “Sorry,” She said, putting the phone away. “I boast, sorry.”

“You should totally boast about your kid,” Zoe said smiling. “Hey, does she like dolls?”

Sveta looked uncertain, but then nodded.

“One minute,” Zoe said. She hurried to the hall closet, stuffed with boxes from her parents’ house, and came back with an old American Girl doll that she’d had since she was a kid. She had been planning to donate it. It was still in really great shape; Zoe had insisted on taking meticulous care of it when she was younger. “Here. Give this to Sofia. I was going to give it away.”

“This is too much.”

“It’s not. Really. Please take it.”

Sveta stared. Then she nodded and tucked the doll under her arm. “See you in two weeks.”

Zoe sighed as Sveta left. That was precisely the kind of bullshit rich white lady move that her mom would pull. Jesus Christ she was turning into her mother.

Her brain flashed to her mom in an armchair, blood everywhere. They had to throw the armchair away. There were specific people who had to be called to clean up blood and guts and crime scenes. They had to pass all sorts of certifications and dispose of the damaged material in specific ways. That’s what they told Zoe when she asked what would happen to the chair.

Her dad’s death didn’t require the same kind of clean up. At least not that she saw.

The wake was small. Closed casket because of the small fact that both of them were murdered. Only a few aunts and uncles invited.

Connor couldn’t come, obviously, because he was dead, so Zoe had to play hostess at a funeral. Which blew. Hannah came, for a while, and she brought flowers which was funny because they didn’t allow them in the church during Lent. He showed up at the end. Before the lock up the room with the bodies and close down the funeral home to drive the casket to the church and then the graveyard. He had slipped inside and held her hand and they both were a super pathetic, snotty mess. She was pretty sure he slipped into the back of the church too, wearing sunglasses, head bowed.

The same priest who did Connor’s…

Who did _Ben’s_ funeral handled the whole thing. It was super private. The service (she picked a liturgy to avoid the whole issue of having to choke down a communion wafer) lasted  barely thirty minutes. The eulogy was a shared spectacle of bullshit. The priest talked about Larry and Cynthia, together in Heaven. He didn’t mention their dead son. Zoe was almost grateful.

 

* * *

It was a stupid idea to wear this dress. Not enough fabric for the weather, Zoe thought, pulling the tight polyblend piece of shit skirt down closer to her knees. She was out with friends.

Well. Not friends, exactly. She didn’t have those anymore.

But people who she knew from the bars and clubs. People she saw regularly.

She was outside on the smoking deck. She headed out there with one of the other girls (Zoe had never learned her name, and now it was too late to ask), and they’d smoked a joint because the guy who was meant to sell them some Molly tonight never showed. Since they couldn’t go up, Zoe reasoned, they might as well get stoned.

She used to judge Connor so much for smoking weed when they were kids. She thought it was a stupid drug from the few times she had tried it. It just made her feel slow and spaced out.

But now that was exactly how Zoe wanted to feel.

It was a nice alternative to the nothing.

She hung around the smoking deck, cursing the cold weather that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, and smoking a cigarette. She did that sometimes. Whatever. If she got cancer, she could always just ask Connor for a lung or something.

If they were even the same blood type.

Who fucking knew.

Zoe headed back inside for a drink.

Or five.

She let a man her father’s age buy her a shot. And a drink. And another. When he asked if she wanted to go back to his hotel room with him, Zoe laughed. “You could be my dad. No.”

“You bitches are all the same. Teases.”

Zoe snorted, finishing the drink he’d bought her.  “Not my fault nobody wants to fuck you-”

“Zoe?”

Her head turned as the guy kept rambling about how she was dressed like a slut for such a tease, but she couldn’t hear him because Hannah was here and she shouldn’t be here.

She looked.

Shitty.

Her hair was too long.

She wasn’t dressed up like she often would be. No tie or button down. She had on a loose fitting hoodie and looked like she could use some sleep.

She looked like she was supposed to be in fucking Vermont where Zoe had left her. “What the fuck are you doing here?” Zoe asked.

Hannah frowned. “I… I’m giving a paper on the… I’m giving a talk on my paper on the… the cure in town. I met them today, at the conference,” She gestured to a group of three other women, two of them butch, not far behind. “Apparently I’m… no fun to be around, so they’re trying to cheer me up.”

“Nice of them,” Zoe said coolly. She turned to leave.

“Wait, Zoe, can we talk?” Hannah said, following. “I get it if you don’t want to see me ever again, I get it. But I’m worried about you. We all are. Nobody’s heard from you in months… Are you alright? Taking care of yourself?”

“I’m fine,” Zoe said.

“Are you?”

She frowned. “Guess that’s not really your problem anymore.”

“That’s not…” Hannah looked like she might cry and that just really pissed Zoe off. “I. You were never a problem, Zoe. I care about you, even if you don’t want me anymore. I just… I need to know you’ll be okay.”

“I’m not okay,” Zoe said laughing. “Why would I be? My parents are dead, my brother sees no issue with literally fucking their murderer, and you? You just can’t take no for an answer.”

“I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“If you were decent, you wouldn’t have said anything when you saw me.”

“I… I’m sorry.” Hannah put her hands into her pockets. “I just… I know things can get tough, for you, and I. I’m there. Even if… I can be your friend, or whatever you need. I just really, really worry.”

“You want to be _friends_?” Zoe laughed. “God, lesbians really are pathetic. We didn’t even date that long. It wasn’t even serious until everyone around me started dying. You know that right?”

“Zo, come on.”

“Do not call me that,” Zoe snapped. “Just leave it alone. Go play with your friends. Miracle that you have any.”

She stormed (or stumbled) out of the bar.

She couldn’t get her fucking phone to cooperate and order her an Uber, so she dragged her ass to a nearby park where she could restart the phone and get herself home.

Fucking Hannah.

Fuck her for ruining Zoe’s night.

She lit a cigarette while she waited for the phone to boot up. She missed her old phone, the one her dad threw right out of the window that day last semester and then she walked into her house and her mom died right in front of her. Zoe was touching her when she went limp and slack. Like all her strings had been cut. Like a computer unexpectedly unplugged. She was just gone.

Her fucking phone was taking forever.

It was freezing in this stupid dress. She should have worn a jacket. It got colder than she expected and these shoes were basically sandals with a heel. She was underdressed.

She didn’t feel right.

Something… was off.

She finished her cigarette and her head swirled a little when she typed the password into her phone. She just needed to get home, but her head was heavy and her eyes were heavy and she could hardly focus.

She thought maybe that creepy old guy might have… done something to her drink. Something about… roofies tasted salty? Maybe. She just needed to get home. She just needed…

“Miss.” There was a light her face and Zoe tried to look away. “Miss can you hear me? Can you tell me your name?”

She was cold. It was so cold. Who’d switched off the heat.

Connor was always cold growing up. Drove Zoe nuts; he’d always monkey with the thermostat and then her room would be boiling.

“Miss. Your name?”

“Zoe Murphy.”

“Her temp’s too low.” There was a voice somewhere, over her head, above her. They were moving, down a hallway maybe? She didn’t know.

“Did you take anything?”

“Drank… smoked some pot…” She remembered reading online that doctors didn’t care if you did drugs they just didn’t want you to lie. “There was a … there was a guy? My drink, he might have… put something in my drink.”

It was hard to stay awake.

She was fading out, blacking out, the lights all going dim.

“Is there anyone we should call?”

She shook her head, saying… something about having no family. “I’m.. an orphan... Haha.” And then she was asleep.

* * *

 

“...Knew I should have just dragged her ass out of there the last time I was in town.”

“I do not think she would like this.”

“I’m just glad they called me.”

“How did she have your number? She outright refused to take mine when she got her new phone.”

“I told her to call in case of emergencies, before everything died down.”

Zoe’s eyes flickered open. She felt cold and shaky and she had no idea where she was.

“Holy shit, Zoe.” She heard footsteps and suddenly above her head there were two identical faces. “Zoe are you okay?”

“Don’t want _you_ here…” She mumbled. “I dunno where here even is…” She felt sick, the room spun a little when she tired to sit.

“Hey hey don’t try to sit, you’re-”

Whatever Connor was saying was cut off by Zoe throwing up on his shoes. “Don’t want you here,” she muttered, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Get the fuck out.”

“The hospital called me,” She heard a familiar voice, Irish… Seamus. “I’m listed as ‘in case of emergency’ in your phone.”

“Fuck. Well. Emergency’s over. You can all go home.”

Connor was out of sight, probably cleaning off his shoes, which Zoe thought was kind of… satisfying. Gus and Seamus, however, hadn’t backed off despite Zoe’s attempt to turn this hospital room into some kind of gross version of Splash Mountain. She noticed suddenly that Pampushka was sitting on the floor beside her bed. Zoe wondered if Gus had somehow trained the dog to act like some sort of… mental health sentry.

“How are you feeling?” Gus asked, frowning at her. He looked better than he did last time she saw him. He was still recovering then.

“Most excellent,” Zoe said, finally managing to sit up. How drunk had she been last night?

There was an IV in her arm, and she reached over to yank it out when a nurse appeared to materialize out of nowhere to tell her to leave it. Then she leaned over to the phone in the room and rang for someone to come clean up the puke.

“I want to go home,” She said.

“You’ll be discharged soon. But I would suggest having someone stay with you. Looks like you had a pretty rough night.”

“I’ll be fine, thanks.”

“One of us will stay with her,” Connor assured the nurse as she left.

A moment later, Pampushka whined, her nose nudging Gus’s hand, and Gus stood up suddenly. “Excuse me,” he said, leaving the room with Pampushka following close behind.

Zoe was about to say something snotty about Gus having an issue with hospitals when a custodian appeared with cart. “We’ll have to mop this now,” he said, throwing sawdust or cat litter or something on Zoe’s puddle of puke. “There’s, like, a pan you could have barfed in, you know.”  
Zoe frowned at the guy while he swept. He went back to his cart in the hall, reappearing with a mop, a bucket, and a CAUTION: wet floor sign. When he rang the mop out, the whole room flooded with the smell of bleach.

Gross.

Connor and Seamus exchanged a look, and Zoe thought she knew there was something she should know about bleach but her brain was crap and she was too tired to care.

Zoe managed to kick Connor and Seamus out of her room before an emergency room doctor came in to lecture Zoe about the dangers of binge drinking and drug use, and practically glossing over the fact that someone had totally drugged her.

“Wait, what?”

“There was GHB in your blood.”

“Awesome,” Zoe said, flopping back on her pillows. “Fan-fucking-tastic.”

The doctor was frowning. “You might want to ask one of your brothers to stay with you.”

“I don’t have a brother,” Zoe snapped.

The doctor didn’t seem impressed. “Look, you’re twenty years old. You came in last night drunk, high, and roofied, and you were hypothermic from passing out on a park bench. I dunno who those guys who showed up are, but I think whoever they are they would want to make sure you’re okay.”

Which was how Zoe, wearing a pair of paper pants and a hoodie Connor lent her, let Seamus and Connor lead her to the car. “Gus is there already,” Seamus was saying. He had an arm around her; Zoe wouldn’t let Connor touch her to help keep her steady. “Pampushka smelled bleach in the hall and got him out of there.”

“Right,” Zoe said. “He’s not good with bleach. Right.”

“We’ll get you home, and then get you something to eat,” Connor was saying. “And then we’ll… I dunno. Obviously we need to find a therapist for you to see, like, immediately.”

“Yeah sure,” Zoe said snidely. “I’ll take your advice, since you’re obviously the pinnacle of mental health.”

“That’s enough Zoe,” Seamus said beside her.

Zoe wasn’t done, though. She struggled away from Seamus, standing shakily on her own. “Because last time I checked in, Connor was busy doing _super healthy things_ like dating suicidal scientists and trying not to relapse back into his addiction to painkillers. Or are we all just forgetting that we had to have a conversation about flushing the fentanyl?”

Connor’s face was so pale it was almost grey.

Zoe found that sort of satisfying.

She was about to open her mouth again, say something else caustic and awful, but Pampushka barked and Gus sort of waved awkwardly. “Sorry,” He mumbled. He was white as a sheet, and he kept patting Pampushka’s head like it was the only thing anchoring him to the planet  “Zoe, you’re okay?” He asked. Mercifully, he didn’t hug her, which Zoe appreciated. Gus was a hugger.

“Fine,” She said. She felt like asshole for wanting to be rude to him. “Can I just… go home? I can take a cab or something.”

“Not happening,” Connor said.

Zoe frowned but nonetheless climbed into the back of the car with Pampushka and Gus. Pampushka put her head on Zoe’s knee, and Zoe tried to concentrate on not throwing up on her.

“What even happened to you last night?” Connor said. “Why were you out on a Wednesday night?”

“Connor,” Seamus said, his voice warning.

Zoe leaned her head against the window trying to pretend she couldn’t hear anything. Pampushka pushed her little wet nose against Zoe’s hand. She patted the dog’s head, closing her eyes. Connor was going on and on in a very Larry Murphy type of way. He genuinely said something about Zoe “throwing her life away.”

Her hand found the latch that opened the door. She was trying to determine how fast she could unbuckle herself and throw herself out onto the highway, Lady Bird style. Zoe and her mom had seen that movie together and cried, on Connor’s birthday the first year after he died.

“Don’t.”

Zoe looked over at Gus, who looked worried. Pampushka whined.

“Don’t what?” She said, challenging him.

“Don’t.”

Zoe moved her hand off of the door’s handle. Gus seemed to relax.

This was a fucking nightmare.

* * *

 

The five of them (Zoe in her paper pants, clutching a plastic bag with her dress and purse still in it, Connor bitching about how he was cold because he gave away his hoodie, Gus in a soft flannel who was wearing, unless Zoe’s eyes were deceiving her, a pair of fuzzy pink socks under his shoes, Pampushka with her pink tongue lolling out of her mouth, and Seamus, who looked like he was really regretting giving out his number to Zoe) trooped up the stairs to Zoe’s apartment. She stubbornly refused to take the elevator.

It took Zoe a long time to dig out her keys from the plastic bag.

She managed to get the door open only to walk inside and happen upon a tiny little kid standing in her kitchen.

“Sofia!” She said something Zoe didn’t understand when it all clicked.

Fuck.

Right.

Sveta.

It was cleaning day.

“Shit,” Zoe mumbled. “Sveta, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Sveta looked mortified. “Sorry, I…” She started saying something about her sitter cancelling, and she looked close to tears, and Zoe felt like garbage.

“It’s fine. Don’t worry. It’s fine,” Zoe said.

“Who’s this?” Connor asked, frowning.

“Sveta. She… I hired her to clean my place sometimes. And her daughter, Sofia.” Zoe looked over at Connor and Gus and Pampushka and Seamus, all of them looking extremely… weird and out of place and awkward in her kitchen. “Sveta this is…” She took a deep breath. “Connor and Gus, my brothers, and their dad.”

“Hi,” Connor said, waving awkwardly.

“We will go,” Sveta said, looking kind of frantic,  “I come back later. I am so sorry, I…” She leaned down and said something softly to Sofia in Ukrainian and Zoe watched Gus’s eyes light up and he said something to her and Zoe’s head hurt to much to try to guess what the conversation was about. Sveta’s stricken face relaxed, just a little, but she kept a protective arm around Sofia.

Until Sofia spied Pampushka and everyone seemed to relax as the little girl pet the “doggy” and Gus and Sveta had a long conversation which Zoe assumed was probably about how much of a mess she was. She left the room to change out of the clothes she had come home in, putting on some sweats and her own hoodie, and returning to give Connor’s back to him. Sveta and Gus were still talking, and whatever he had said had made Sveta laugh.

She looked a lot more relaxed now. Zoe wondered about her history again. Moved here at fourteen, had a kid a twenty. She probably had every reason to be freaked out by a trio of dudes invading a previously dude-free zone.

“Did you catch any of that?” Seamus asked Connor quietly.

He shook his head. “I think there was something about… Sandwiches? I have no idea.”

“You speak Ukrainian?” Zoe grumbled at Connor.

His face turned pink. “No. Not really. I’ve been trying to learn.”

Zoe’s mood, if possible, turned sourer. Connor would try to learn languages for Gus, but he couldn’t even stay the fuck away from a murderer for Zoe.

Charming. Honestly. He was a real stand up fellow.

Fucking traitor.

Eventually, one Ukrainian conversation later, Zoe found herself eating lunch with her brother, his brother, their dad, her cleaning lady, her cleaning lady’s four year old, and a Samoyed with surprisingly good table manners. They did, in fact, have sandwiches. The conversation was mostly light, stuff about the weather, and Zoe noticed a few times that Gus would translate a word or two for Sveta. That was ...nice.

Zoe thought it was fucking annoying how nice he was. It would be a lot easier to hate him if he was an asshole.

Which was hilarious, Zoe thought. Like, the guy had killed people, but he was the nicest of all the clones Zoe had met.

After lunch, Sveta took Sofia and went, saying goodbye with a quick wave.

“How are you feeling?” Connor asked her once the door closed.

“Like I got hit by a truck,” She said. “You can all go now, I’m fine.”

“You were in the hospital!”

“You got drugged last night.”

While Seamus and Connor started on some sort of circle jerk of worry, Zoe got up from the sofa and headed to her bedroom, closing the door and pulling her blankets over her head. She just wanted to sleep until this whole thing disappeared. Nothing even happened.

A little while later, there was a knock on her door. Zoe wanted to ignore it, but she had a feeling her apartment was still crawling with clones and an Irish guy. She grumbled “come in,” and Gus popped his head in, smiling slightly.

“How are you feeling?”

Zoe sat up. “I’ll be better when you get Connor out of my apartment.”

“Is okay if I come in?” Gus asked, and Zoe consented, budging up on the bed so there was space for him. She hated how much he looked like Connor right now, with his long hair floppy and tucked behind one of his goofy ears. All of them had these goofy, too big ears. He perched on the side of her bed, and Zoe realized it was kind of weird not to see Pampushka following him into the room. “How is your head?”

“It hurts.”

Gus frowned. “Is not the only thing that hurts you, yes?”

Zoe wanted to punch him. “I’m really, really not interested in getting lectured right now…”

“No lecture,” Gus said, holding up his arms defensively. “I just… I know this feeling. Hurt in your heart.”

Zoe looked away.

“I give you my number,” Gus said, picking her phone up off of the nightstand where it was charging. “You have mine, I do not have yours. Okay? Call if you need.”

“Great, thanks.” She wasn’t gonna fucking call Gus.

“Zoe,” Gus said. “You are hurting.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a headache, we covered that already–”

“No. You hurt because you miss your family.”

“Don’t talk to me about my family!”

“You call me your brother earlier,” Gus said, sounding thoughtful.

“I just said-”

“I know,” Gus said, smiling slightly. “But I see you as a sister.” When he said “sister” it sounded more like “sestra.” If Zoe had more energy, that might have made her smile. “Connor is my twin, you are his sister,” He said. “I think we are family, too.”

“Well that’s charming but we’re _not_.” Zoe’s hands were shaking, she wanted to hit something, hurt someone, get high, stop this. “We’re not anything to each other. Same for me and Connor. We’re just… an accident, shitty circumstances. We are not a family. Families… don’t pick shitty boyfriends over you, they don’t fucking leave you alone like Connor did to me. We are not a family. I want nothing to do with him, with any of you.”

She didn’t want to feel _this._

“You hurt yourself, with the drinking and the drugs. You hurt Connor, because you are angry he loves Evan.” He frowned. “I understand this. You hurt yourself and others because you hurt in your spirit.”

That sent a flash of pain through Zoe’s chest. She thought it might have hurt less if he’d straight up stabbed her. She gasped, her eyes flooding immediately.

Gus touched her shoulder, a gentle warm pressure. And a second later, he was standing. “You call, if you need to talk. Okay?”

Zoe nodded miserably.

“I will tell Connor and dad to leave now,” He said. Then he stopped. “Your cleaning lady… she is nice?”

“She is.”

“I give her my number too. Just in case.”

“In case of what?” Zoe honestly had no idea what that could possibly mean.

Gus smiled, shrugging. “Just in case.”


	2. There's a Reason I Wake Up Alone in Strange Places

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Thanksgiving, and Zoe runs into Alana Beck.

Connor was pissed. He was pissed. He hated this.

Hated it. 

Zoe wouldn’t talk to him. 

She’d ended up in the  _ hospital _ . Someone had  _ drugged  _ her.   She was lucky she wasn’t dead. 

He felt sick. 

He went home with Seamus for a while, but eventually had to duck out because Seamus had called and had a long conversation about What To Do About Zoe, and frankly that go too much. 

Gus seemed to get it. He pulled Connor into a hug, reassuring him that Zoe was going to be fine. Then Connor drove to Evan’s where he was staying for the weekend. 

Connor didn’t know how to be angry at Zoe and worried for her at the same time. He hated this, he hated this, he hated this. 

Evan had given him a key but there was nobody to excitedly tell about that because clone club already knew and Zoe would probably punch him if he mentioned it. He was still in New York, but he had a key, and that… was nice. 

Connor put his key into the door, and when he walked into Evan’s apartment he was greeted by… Hannah. In an oversized hoodie, her hair longer than Connor had ever seen it, curling around her ears a little. She looked exhausted and sad. She looked almost as bad as Zoe had this morning. 

“Hannah?”

She gave him this sort of miserable looking wave. “Hey.”

“Evan?”

Hannah nodded toward the bedroom. “He went to get his laptop.”

Connor nodded, and hurried over toward the bedroom. “Hey.”

Evan turned around fast; he was kind of jumpy these days,s till. “Hey. How’s Zoe? Is she alright?”

Connor shrugged. “Like, medically, I guess? She… they think someone drugged her which was out in the middle of the night in like… no clothes.” He shook his head. “She still hates me though, so at least something’s normal.”

“Shit.”

“Don’t worry, she still hates you too,” Connor said sarcastically. Evan frowned a little, pulling Connor in for a tight hug. “How come Hannah’s here?”

“She ran into Zoe last night,” Evan said. “She’s a wreck. I guess Zoe said…some stuff.”

Connor sighed. “She’s good at that.”

“I know.”

They both headed back to the living room, where Hannah was anxiously chewing at her cuticle. “Evan said… you saw Zoe earlier?” 

Evan frowned. “Why don’t you two talk? I can go out and… get us something to eat?” He ended up heading out with a plan to get them Indian food for dinner. 

“He could not get out of here fast enough,” Hannah said quietly. “Fuck.”

“He’s… having a hard time with the whole Zoe situation.” Connor frowned. “I think he misses her.”

“Yeah. I miss her too,” Hannah said. “We sublet her room out to this guy Austin? He gets along with everyone and he’s an awesome cook, but… It’s not the same. Sarah’s… pretty pissed actually.”

“Sarah’s one of your other roommates?”

Hannah nodded. “They were like, super close? Since freshman year. Honestly, I think Sarah only started to talk to me because Zoe told her to be nice to me? I dunno, Sarah and Zoe were really really tight. Like Sarah visited over Christmas break freshman year, met your parents… She really liked your mom? It sucks.”

“It sucks.”

“Is she okay?” Hannah asked, sounding close to tears. “Is Zoe okay? She seemed… like really messed up last night, and there was this guy like… creeping on her. Just… I need to know… is she okay?”

“No,” Connor said. “She’s alive, and she’s physically like, generally fine? But she’s… not okay. And she won’t talk to me.”

Hannah covered her face with her hands for a moment. She rubbed her eyes. They were a little red. “She won’t talk to me either. I don’t know what to do. I don’t even have her number, and all of my emails bounced back.” She laughed, this pathetic hollow sound. “My therapist keeps talking about ‘moving on,’ and like. How the hell do you do that when you’re still in love with someone?”

Connor had no idea. He really didn’t. If he did, it was possible he wouldn’t be with Evan right now. He sort of laughed hollowly. “She would only talk to Gus earlier.”

Hannah kinda smiled at that. “He’s pretty easy to talk to. And there’s the fact that he’s got a dog. Always easier to talk if there’s a dog. Plus they don’t, you know, have history?”

“I am stupidly jealous.”

Hannah laughed a little. “You know she was like, super jealous seeing how easily you and Gus get along right?”

“I know.” He chewed his lip. “I fucked up with Zoe. A lot… and she. I just feel like I’ve fucked up my chance to try to make things right.”

“We’re a fucking mess,” Hannah said. 

“We are.” Connor got up and went to the refrigerator. “Want to problem drink a beer?”

Hannah nodded. 

By the time Evan returned with food, they’d each problem drank three beers. 

“This is a bad idea with my anxiety meds,” Hannah laughed. “This is… not a healthy coping mechanism.” She shook her head. “Fuck coping mechanisms.”

“Cheers,” Connor said, tapping his nearly-empty bottle to hers. 

Evan kept pretty quiet throughout dinner. 

Which Connor appreciated. He… He didn’t love it when Evan tried to voice his opinions on the Zoe situation. He’d admitted once that he thought Zoe was being pretty childish, dropping out of school, refusing to talk to Connor, and partying all the time. Evan said it was clear that Zoe needed therapy, and Connor called him a hypocrite considering that Evan had tried to get himself killed only a few months before. The whole thing was a mess, with Connor asking why it was that Evan didn’t care more that Zoe wasn’t speaking to him, considering that the two of them had been so close while Connor was pretending to be dead. And Evan had told him, point blank, if he was only going to get to have one of them in his life, he’d pick Connor everytime. 

Which pissed Connor off. He told Evan that was fucked up and stupid and unhealthy and then stormed out of his apartment, slamming the door so hard he was sure he heard a picture frame smash against the floor. 

He slept on Gus’s couch for a while.

Connor didn’t call Evan for a full week after that fight.

It was stupid, Connor knew, to be angry at Evan for picking him over Zoe. It was stupid. 

But it touched a nerve, because one of the last times Connor had seen Zoe, she’d accused Connor of doing the exact same thing. 

* * *

Not long after he got back together with Evan, Connor took a drive to his parents’ house. The place where they had lived the last few years; the place where his mom died.

He didn’t want to go there.

But Zoe was living there, and he didn’t have her number, so he got the address from Evan and made the drive one evening in early June. 

Zoe looked like hell when she opened the door. She really looked like hell. Huge bags under her eyes, and her hair looked a bit like Gus’s when Seamus first took him in. Matted and dirty. 

“What are you doing here?” 

“I wanted to talk to you. You’ve been avoiding me.”

“I’ve been avoiding everyone,” Zoe said simply before letting him inside. He noticed the armchair his mother had died in was nowhere to be seen. 

Connor felt like he was walking into a church or a morgue. Somewhere where you kept your voice low and respectful. “How are you doing?” He asked Zoe as she headed into the kitchen, pouring herself a rather large glass of wine. 

“Spectacular,” Zoe muttered, downing the whole glass in two swallows. “What’s up?”

Connor sort of smiled sheepishly back at her. “I wanted to tell you something.”

“The whole clone thing was an elaborate prank?”

Connor frowned slightly. “I’ve been talking to Evan.”

Zoe crossed her arms. “Why?”

Connor took a deep breath. “He… he really fucked up, Zoe. And he knows that. But he’s… he’s sorry, and I… I can’t keep being angry at him forever. I love him.”

Zoe’s face was blank. 

“We’re back together,” Connor said, trying to smile.

“Oh,” Zoe said. Her face was just totally blank. Utterly devoid of emotion. And then she was pissed. “You came over here to tell me you’re picking him.”

“What?”

“It’s fine. You… you’re picking him. You’re taking the side of the guy who got our parents killed. Good. Cool. That’s… awesome.”

“No, Zoe, it’s not like that…” Connor said helplessly. “He didn’t… It’s not his fault what happened to mom and dad, Dominic-”

“-Wouldn’t have sent a hitman if your boyfriend didn’t trade Gus to save you,” She said coldly. “I guess I should have expected this. The two of you did lie to me for six months. So. I shouldn’t be surprised. You picked him before, you’re picking him now. Thanks for clearing up what we mean to each other.”

“Zo, come on. I know you’re angry at him, but we… Come on. We just got each other back. Can’t we talk? Can’t we try to make this work?”

Zoe stared at him coldly. “We’re not blood.”

“So? We’re still family.”

“Are we?” Zoe asked. Her eyes had flooded. “Because you know, family doesn’t  _ lie _ to each other for three years about being dead.”

“You know it’s more complicated than that.”

“No, actually, it’s pretty fucking black and white to me. You’d rather be with that asshole than be my family. And that’s fine. Honestly, might have been helpful to know that sooner. Then I wouldn’t have gotten my hopes up.”

“Zoe you are my family.”

“No. You’ve got a nice new family now. Gus and Seamus and Evan. I’m not a part of that. I never will be.”

“Zoe.”

“You know, my parents adopted you and look where it got them… They’re dead. They’re dead because of Evan.”

“It’s not-”

“They died because of him, because of the choices he made, and you’re right back to fucking him after what? A few months.”

“He didn’t mean for this to happen, Zoe. I know you’re angry but-”

“But nothing!” Zoe had shouted. It echoed off of the walls. “But _nothing_. Mom and dad are dead, Connor. They’re not going to show up in three years. They’re in the ground and it’s Evan’s fault, and you don’t care.”

“I  _ care _ .” His voice broke on the word. 

“Dad shouldn’t have taken you in,” She said venomously. “Mom should have told him to turn around and bring you back to that lab. They shouldn't have adopted you. You did nothing but hurt them, and now that you can’t hurt them anymore, you’re hurting me.”

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“Please get out of my parents’ house,” She said, her voice low. “I understand that they didn’t matter to you, but they did to me. So get out.”

He didn’t know what to do, so he left. 

But when he came back the next day, there was a for sale sign in the front yard. Zoe didn’t answer the front door. 

It was something of an unspoken rule after that that Evan didn’t get to have an opinion on Zoe. And that Connor wasn’t allowed to voice his anger toward her around Evan.

* * *

 

Thanksgiving was fast approaching and Zoe decided she was going to just spend the holiday not feeling anything and definitely not thinking about last year’s dorm room dinner, because it was a fucking disaster and even she wasn’t deluded enough to think it had turned out okay. 

Maybe if she had fucked the food up more, Evan Hansen would have gotten righteous food poisoning, been left out of important DYAD intel, and her parents would still be alive. 

Zoe had to awkwardly rebuff Sveta’s invitation to join her and her friends for dinner. “Is small, not much, but always very good food. Please come.”

Zoe didn’t deserve that kind of invitation, even if she was 100% certain it was a pity-orphan invite. She declined and sent an expensive pumpkin pie to the address instead. If nothing else, Zoe would have to rely on Sofia to translate for most of the night.

Plus being surrounded by people who spoke Ukrainian would just remind her of the fact that even though she had thrown a massive fit the last time she saw him, Connor had not turned up to beg her to come do something with him for the holiday. 

Which checked. He had his whole new replacement family now. No need to invite the remainder of his old life to bring down the mood. 

Whatever.

She wasn’t into pity invites anyway.

She had gotten just… so many orphan invites. Half of her mom’s grief group had invited her to their houses, and some distant cousin had left her a voicemail begging her to fly to Florida for the weekend. Even Sarah, who had stopped speaking to her (or Zoe stopped returning her calls, she couldn’t remember) had sent a facebook message begging Zoe to spend the day with her family. “You shouldn’t be alone.”

Zoe was perfectly fine being alone.

To prove this to herself, the Wednesday before, Zoe took herself out for a drink. Or seven. She was having a grand time debating football with the bartender despite the fact that she knew literally nothing about the NFL when a voice cut in suddenly. “Zoe Murphy?”

She turned. 

Alana Beck was standing in the middle of the bar, smiling brightly. She was wearing a blazer, because apparently some fashion choices carried a life sentence, but her glasses were different (tortoise shell frames now) and her hair was styled in a short afro. 

“Alana! Oh my god, how are you?” Zoe said, cheerfully hopping off her barstool to give Alana a tight hug. She smelled the same. Zoe recalled that she had a wonderful, fruit smell when they slept together for the first time. A perfume or something. 

“I’m well, thank you,” Alana said. 

“You’re at Princeton still?”

Alana smiled. “I am. Though I was in London this past Spring Semester.”

“Oh my god, that’s awesome!” Zoe exclaimed. “You have to tell me about it. All about it. Have a drink with me, please, we haven’t seen each other in forever.”

Two drinks later, Alana was suitably loosened up. She was complaining about her academic advisor getting in the way of her triple major, when suddenly her smile sort of slipped. “Zoe.”

“What?”

“I totally forgot about something… until right now. Over the summer, I saw this article online about this study, on like… human subjects. It was… beyond illegal and there was this person in a photo who looked… a lot like your brother.”

Fuck. 

Fuck. 

Fuck. 

“Huh, weird,” Zoe said. “Do you want another drink?”

Alana frowned. “And I heard something… something happened to your parents.”

Zoe made a snap decision. She leaned over and kissed Alana, hard, on the mouth. Alana responded enthusiastically, and Zoe relaxed a bit. 

“Let’s go back to my place,” Zoe said. Slurred. 

“Where even is that now?” Alana asked and Zoe honest to god drew a blank. She couldn’t remember her address. She laughed, starting to say that she’d call them an uber when she realized her phone was like. 

Dead. 

Like her parents, Zoe said. 

Alana looked at her suddenly. 

Shit. 

She’d said that part out loud. 

“Why don’t you just crash with me? We’ll charge your phone and you can go home in the morning.”

“Sure.”

“Unless you wanna stay for dinner?”

Zoe laughed. “Probably not in this outfit.” Alana laughed. Zoe wasn’t even dressed badly, just that the flannel she had on was worn and old and her jeans had a few holes.

* * *

 

She and Alana made out a bit more in the cab, and then… Zoe blacked out. 

When she got up in the morning, she genuinely had no idea where she was until she remembered Alana asking her to come home with her. 

Shit. 

Zoe took stock. She still had her underwear on… but that was all.

Had she slept with Alana?

Must have. 

Shit. 

This had happened a couple of times before. 

All she could think about under the pounding of her head was the time she slept with Alana her senior year, and then told Evan all about it. Because they were friends, close friends, friends who admitted to being bisexual and sleeping with someone they knew only to have them bust out laughing and say that they had lost their virginity to the exact same person and it not be a big gross deal. 

Zoe was going to puke in Alana Beck’s charmingly decorated childhood bedroom, she realized. On her trundle bed, no less.

Either that or she was going to drag her naked self around Alana Beck’s childhood home in search of a toilet or a trash can or bucket she could throw up in because her body’s automatic response to thinking about Evan these days was to throw up. 

“Shit, shit,” Zoe grumbled, standing shakily, trying to find some fucking clothes in the dark. The urge to puke had subsided but the urge to get the fuck out was super strong.

“Zoe.”

“Hi sorry, do you know where my clothes are?”

Alana made an exasperated noise. “I washed them. You got sick last night.”

“In bed?”

“In the uber.”

“Shit. I… shit. I’ll pay you back for that,” Zoe said. 

Alana switched a light on. “You clothes are probably done now. I threw them in the dryer before I went to sleep.”

“I’m so sorry,” Zoe said. 

“It’s fine. You wouldn’t let me lend you anything to sleep in,” Alana said. “Hang on, I’ll go get your stuff.”

Zoe perched herself, topless on Alana Beck’s bed regretting her entire fucking life. 

Alana returned with her clothes neatly folded, and Zoe got dressed fast. “Thanks again,” She said. “I’ll venmo you for the uber thing. I’m so sorry. I should get going.”

Alana looked… a little disappointed. “It’s only seven. Are you sure?”

Zoe was too hungover to decipher if Alana was hitting on her or not. “My phone?”

“Plugged in over there,” Alana said, pointing. 

“Thanks. Sorry. Thanks.”

Zoe grabbed the phone and rushed out of her room, out of the house, attracting a look from Alana’s dad as she went. She shoved her shoes on once she was in the driveway then took off at a jog down the block before she puked. 

She used to live two blocks from here. Someone else lived in that house now. 

She kept walking. 

She had to call an uber but she was scared to switch on her phone. 

She came to a stop at a park bench. One she avoided for years because her brother had died on it. 

Except he hadn’t. Some kid named Ben did. Overdosed on sleeping pills. His parents didn’t even know he had died. 

Her mom only found out Connor was still alive right before she died. 

She had lost so much blood. So much blood. 

Zoe could still remember Hannah having to help her into the shower to get the blood out of her hair. Zoe hadn’t even noticed, but it had dried and made her hair stick together in muddy brown chunks and it was all over her neck and arms and clothes and in the moment Zoe, exhausted and broken had cried to Hannah that she didn’t understand why the blood turned brownish. Why it didn’t stay red. 

Hannah was still in her clothes, but as Zoe sobbed about how she didn’t understand why the water running down the shower drain was brown, Hannah practically ripped off her shirt and yanked off her jeans and climbed in to hold Zoe before she collapsed. She still had her socks on.  Hannah ended up being the one to wash Zoe’s hair because Zoe’s hands shook too hard to hold the shampoo bottle. Hannah, explaining softly that when blood oxidized it turned a brownish red color, combed out the tangles with way more conditioner than was strictly necessary and Zoe’s hair was soft and smelled like apples for days afterward. 

The problem with Hannah was that she was too kind. Too understanding. In the days after her mom died, Hannah mostly just let Zoe hang all over her. She worked out the clone cure, but even then, Zoe sort of let Hannah carry and drag her around, and Hannah was always there if Zoe went on a sudden crying jag. 

When Heidi showed up, Zoe basically clung to her. She followed Heidi from room to room, never more than a step behind, and Hannah was gentle about that too. She seemed to realize that both Zoe and Hannah were grieving, and she didn’t comment or flinch when Zoe oscillated between the two of them. 

But then Evan showed up, and Zoe found out that her dad had died and…

Hannah was kind. She was too nice. She kept trying to just let Zoe have whatever feelings she wanted, and at first Zoe couldn’t imagine how she got so lucky as to find someone that understanding. 

Whenever Zoe would snap or rage or sob uncontrollably, Hannah would just say that she understood. She’d lost her dad when she was a teenager, she knew the feeling. It was comforting. 

Until it was infuriating. 

Until Zoe found herself spitting, angry, that Hannah did not, in fact, get it. She didn’t understand because Hannah’s died slowly of cancer but Zoe’s parents had been killed. Had been murdered. She didn’t understand because it wasn’t like Hannah had been good friends, best friends with cancer when it showed up and took her dad away. 

But Zoe and Evan had been close. Very close. 

And everything that friendship was built on was a lie. 

And Evan had fucked up everything so badly that her parents died. 

And the thing that fucking stung was that Zoe knew that Connor knew this. He knew that tangentially it was all fucking Evan’s fault. 

And that motherfucking traitor forgave him. He forgave him. 

He picked Evan over Zoe. 

He was always fucking picking people over Zoe. 

Zoe stood up and called an uber. 

When she got home, she sat down on the sofa and turned on the television. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade blared. Some Broadway show was doing some uplifting, life is worth living kind of number. 

She stared at the television. 

Stared. 

Her head hurt. Her body hurt. She wanted…

Zoe stood up. She went to her bathroom, to her medicine cabinet. She stared into it. There was a lot of shit in there. Sleeping pills her doctor had gave her after her parents died because Zoe couldn’t sleep but then she stopped going to that doctor. 

He also gave her Xanax.

It was like he wanted her to.

There was other stuff in her medicine cabinet. She was always stashing some leftovers when she picked up from her dealer. 

Just in case. 

She could make quite a cocktail out of all this shit. 

Zoe stared into her medicine cabinet and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade blared in the living room and this could be it.

What a pathetic way to go. 

Zoe suddenly groped for her phone, realizing that her fingers were shaking terribly. It rang once before he answered. 

“Zoe. Are you alright?”

“Gus, hey,” She said, trying to sound friendly and normal and like she wasn’t calling in case of an emergency. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

“Thank you. Are you alright?”

Zoe laughed hollowly. “No. I’m not.”

“I will be there soon.”

“Okay.”

“Stay on the phone.”

“Okay.”

* * *

 

By the time Gus arrived, despite the fact that Zoe had been on the phone with him the whole time, she had convinced herself she was overreacting. 

“Hi Gus. Hi Pampushka,” She stopped to pet the dog who was wagging her tail and shoving her wet nose under Zoe’s hand so she would pet her more. “Shit, Gus, I… Really, I’m sorry,” She said opening the door. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me, I’m just… being dramatic, I’m being an  _ idiot _ , I’m totally fine. The whole holiday thing got to me and I freaked out and I’m fine now and fuck I’m being so rude I’m interrupting your Thanksgiving, I’m the worst, I’m sorry just go home-”

Gus had been frowning through her whole little rant. “Could you please slow down? I am not understanding.”

Zoe felt like an idiot. “Right. Sorry.” She tried to take a breath and slow down, but she was still hyped up and anxious and suddenly she was trying to explain that she was  _ totally fine  _ but then she was just crying. She was just blubbering like a fucking moron about how she was alone and it was Thanksgiving and she just wanted to die and the fucking parade was playing and last year she had been curled up with Hannah watching it, and she didn’t even feel guilty about skipping Thanksgiving with her parents but now it was a stabbing, horrible pain. 

Gus had led her to the couch and let Zoe just cry on his shoulder for a really long time. She cried so hard that she couldn’t breathe properly; Zoe cried so hard she found herself running full tilt toward the bathroom because she had made herself sick. 

Gus had followed her. And held back her hair while she puked and cried and literally performed a one-woman show entitled “The Most Pathetic Person.”

Every time Zoe thought she might have caught her breath, might have stopped crying, her body violently disagreed. This went on for what felt like hours, until her face was coated in tears and sweat and snot and her chin was slick with sick and spit and her insides were screaming in pain and she was dry heaving painfully. 

And the whole time, Gus was there. He sat beside her on the floor. He held back her hair, rubbed her back, sometimes he sort of hummed tunelessly. 

Finally, it all seemed to stop. Gus helped Zoe to her feet. She washed her face and rinsed her mouth with shaky hands, and Gus led her to the sofa and returned a few seconds later with a glass of water for her. 

“Do you feel better?”

She nodded. 

“What shall we do now?”

Zoe shrugged. The parade was still playing on the television. 

“What do you want?”

“I can’t be here…” Zoe said, hoarsely. “I can’t be alone right now. I’ll do something stupid.”

Gus nodded. 

Within an hour, Zoe had showered, packed, and left her house with Gus.  “I’m sorry again,” Zoe mumbled as they got into Gus’s van. “I’ve ruined your Thanksgiving and...I’m… Thank you.”

Gus smiled, shrugging. “I don’t understand this Thanksgiving? Why is there turkey? What does that have to with pilgrims stealing land?”

Zoe sort of laughed. 

“I do like the food,” He said. “Pumpkin pie is nice.”

“It is.”

“Have you eaten?” Gus asked, frowning. 

“No.”

“Okay,” He said. “We will eat.”

Some time later, Zoe found herself in Gus’s new apartment, sitting at the table and trying to make herself eat the food he put in front of her. Gus made her pancakes and bacon and sat across from her while she ate. Zoe still felt sort of queasy, but she knew that her last proper meal had been too long ago. She tried to look around the room instead of concentrating on what she was trying to eat. 

The place was cute. Decorated nicely. A lot of art on the walls. It wasn’t big, but it wasn’t cramped either. In the living room, there was one wall that was painted a buttery yellow, and it made the whole space look inviting and homey. 

But the art was the main thing. 

Paintings, drawings, some large and some small. Zoe half wondered who Gus’s decorator was. He’d lived here about the same amount of time as Zoe had lived in her place, but his apartment seemed… lived in. Welcoming. 

Zoe’s felt desolate and empty by comparison. 

“I like the art. On the walls,” Zoe said, trying to force herself to take another bite. 

Gus smiled brightly. “It is mine.”

Zoe put her fork down. “You did that?” She pointed to a charcoal drawing of a formidable looking angel which hung on the wall near the table. 

Gus nodded. 

“Wow,” she said, totally sincerely. “That’s… amazing.”

“Thank you.”

“How long have you been drawing?”

Gus smiled, looking a bit bashful. It was an unusual look to see on Connor’s face. “I draw since I am small. It is… silly. Just a hobby, but I like it.” 

“I like it too. It’s all very beautiful.”

Gus insisted that she stay with him for a few days, and Zoe had no energy to argue with him. They spent Thanksgiving watching  _ Adventure Time  _ and camped out on Gus’s sofa with Pampushka between them. 

“I’ve never seen this before,” Zoe admitted after a few episodes. 

Gus smiled, explaining to her about how the first time he met Reed, Reed accidentally got him high, and then Reed, Connor, and Gus watched  _ Adventure Time _ for like. Hours. 

“That’s cute,” Zoe said, smiling. 

“Was nice. Reed is good person.”

Zoe agreed. She liked Reed. They were very kind to her the whole time she and Hannah had camped out in the safe house. She remembered thinking that they were… really steady in the face of all of the bullshit happening. 

She also remembered thinking that maybe Reed would have been less calm if any of that stuff was actually happening  _ to  _ them. 

“How are you feeling?” Gus asked her a few hours later. 

Zoe shrugged. Considering how panicked and breakable she had felt earlier that day she felt… fine. Kind of tired. It was… weird. “I don’t know. Fine. I shouldn’t feel _fine_ , right?”

Pampushka nuzzled Zoe’s hand with her nose. Zoe wondered if the dog was some kind of trained therapy dog or if she just really liked getting pet by fucked up people. 

“Feelings are messy,” Gus said softly. “Sometimes, it is difficult to tell what you are feeling.”

“Yeah.”

“Is okay though.You are allowed to feel how you feel, even if the feelings are confusing.” He touched her shoulder for a second. “You can tell them to me. If you want. I will listen.”

Zoe felt … extremely tired at the prospect of talking about her feelings right now. “I think I just want to sleep.”

“Okay.”

They had a thirty minute debate about where Zoe would sleep. She insisted on taking the sofa, and Gus refused. “You are guest. You take the bedroom.”

It was confusing to see her brother’s face and stubbornness dedicated totally to making sure she was taken care of. 

Like. 

What the fuck.

Zoe eventually gave in and slept in Gus’s room. The walls had a lot more art. One of them was genuinely of a dozen donuts, which Zoe just fucking loved. She almost wanted to ask him to make her one. It was cute as hell. 

There were a couple of photos on the nightstand. Gus, Seamus, and Connor in one. One of Pampushka, though Zoe couldn’t honestly tell if the person in the picture was Gus or Connor. 

The blankets on the bed were like. Genuinely the softest thing Zoe had ever felt. And they smelled nice. Like vanilla and lavender fabric softener. 

It was a weirdly drama-free ending to the day. Extremely different than what she had pictured, which involved a lot of Connor getting in her face and someone ending up in a psych ward. 

Zoe slept for sixteen hours. 

She did the math when she woke up. 

Her body ached slightly, but in a way she hadn’t felt in a long time. The ache of a good night’s sleep. 

She heard a voice outside of the bedroom, and realized after a few seconds that Gus was on the phone. 

“Zoe is safe.” A pause. “I do not think this a good idea, Connor. I worry about her spirit.” Gus was quiet for a second. Then his voice lost the soft, understanding tone. “Connor. I am saying no. She called me. She has not asked for you. She has much anger, and we must let her have it.”

Another pause. “I am sorry, Connor. I will call tomorrow.” A sigh. “Love you much. Goodbye.” 

Zoe counted to ten and then stepped out of Gus’s bedroom. “Morning.”

“You’re awake!” Gus said, happily. “How did you sleep?”

Zoe tried to smile. “Alright… Great actually.”

“I am glad.” He smiled at her again. “Would you like food? You might be hungry after sleeping so much.”

Zoe tried to smile back. “Sure.”

He made her a grilled cheese sandwich and sat across from her while she ate, checking his phone a few times. “Sorry,” he said, eventually putting the phone into his pocket. “How are you feeling?”

Zoe chewed her bite carefully. Gus was a good cook. “I guess I’m okay. I… didn’t mean to freak out and scare you yesterday. I’m sorry I made you miss Thanksgiving.”

Gus shook his head. “It is alright. Don’t worry.” He stood up, going to get a glass of water. “You want more food? Something to drink?”

Zoe accepted his offer for a glass of water. 

Gus sat down again. “Connor is very worried about you.”

Zoe frowned. 

“But I told him to stay away. You do not have to see him if you don’t want.”

Zoe stared. She knew he had done that, but something about him telling her made her feel… safer. 

Gus, unlike Connor, unlike Evan… he didn’t lie to her. He was honest and that was. Strange. But it also made her relieved. 

“What would you like to do today?”   


“Don’t you have to work?”

Gus shook his head. “I have two appointments tomorrow, but I rescheduled today’s. Not many. Only three. I will do them next week. I want to make sure you felt better before I leave you alone.”

Zoe took a breath. 

That was… 

The sort of shit people would do for Connor at the safehouse. Stick with him. The sort of thing that Zoe did those first few days. 

“Thank you,” She said quietly. “You didn’t have to do that.”

Gus looked almost offended. “Of course I do this. You are family.”

Zoe stared. 

That was.

She didn’t know how to take the idea that he thought of her as family.

At all.


	3. Take My Clothes, I'm Begging

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gus remains the best. Sveta and Sofia say hello.

Zoe moved out of her dorm after her parents’ funeral. 

“Are you sure about this?” Hannah loaded another armful of clothes on top of a pile of storage bins, wrapped neatly in trash bags to protect them. A practical moving hack she knew. Hannah was full of those. She was the best person to call if you needed to move out of your dorm room in a hurry. 

Zoe nodded. “I just… I can’t be here right now.” She was pulling the strings of fairy lights off of her walls, looping them around her arm. She put the strings into a box. Basically everything was boxed up already. Photos, books

Hannah walked over to Zoe, pulling her in for a hug. Zoe put her head on Hannah’s shoulder, taking a deep breath. “What can I do?” Hannah asked her, petting her hair. 

Zoe pulled her into a kiss. 

And another. Then she pulled away and pulled off her shirt. Unhooked her bra. 

“Zoe…” Hannah bit her lip, looking uncertain. 

“Help me forget,” She said softly. “Just for a minute. Please.”

“Babe.” Zoe was pulling off Hannah’s shirt, kissing Hannah’s neck. 

“Help me forget.”

“Okay.”

The next morning, Hannah and Zoe packed a Uhaul truck and set out for Zoe’s parents’ house. The drive was quiet. Hannah did most of the driving.

“I’m going to miss seeing you everyday,” Hannah said softly as they crossed out of Vermont. 

“Please don’t try to give me a guilt trip now.”

“I’m not,” Hannah said. “I just… It’s going to be hard, not seeing you. I want you to know I’ll miss you. That I love you. But that I trust you’re going to feel better with some space.”

“Yeah,” Zoe said. “I think I will.” She took Hannah’s hand. “Don’t let Sarah get too drunk on weekends.”

“I won’t.”

“Make sure to give Mitch hell at least once a week for the time he tried to go blond.”

“You know I will.”

“Don’t let Max get anyone pregnant.”

“You’re coming back,” Hannah said, squeezing Zoe’s hand. “You’ll be back by August. You can make sure to do all of that at the house. We’ll make a sign for the kitchen.”

“Right,” Zoe said. “August just feels very far away.”

* * *

 

Zoe had never related to Pampushka more than she did that weekend. Because, like Pampushka, Zoe followed Gus around for most of the weekend. Just sort of… wherever Gus went, she followed. And he seemed perfectly happy to let her do this. 

On Friday afternoon, Gus and Zoe and Pampushka took a long walk around Gus’s neighborhood. He showed her his favorite donut shop, and the park where Pampushka liked to play. 

“Pampushka meets up with her friend Rory there on Wednesdays sometimes. Rory is an Irish Wolfhound; he is bigger than Pampushka and they go on adventures. And play chase. Is very cute.” 

Zoe smiled. “That’s adorable.”

“His human is Joe. Joe takes Rory to have him groomed now, which is nice. He gets muddy often, so I see him many times since moving.”

Zoe nodded. “Aren’t Irish Wolfhounds, like, huge?”

Gus smiled. “Very tall, yes. Almost as tall as me on hind legs. And heavy. Rory is good boy though. He loves to give hugs.”

“Awww.”

Gus shows her a few other stops on his tour. “This is gay bar Reed takes me to when I first move.”

“You go out with Reed?” Zoe asked. She'd never really imagined that specific pair spending a lot of time together without other clones present. Reed was nice, but they were sort of... an oddball. Zoe had heard stories about them getting a lot of people high because they didn't think to mention that the food or drink they were serving had drugs in it. Reed didn't exactly seem like Gus's go to clone. 

“Sometimes, yes,” Gus said. “They are fun to go out with. Very friendly to new people? They like to say hello and once a man buys us both drinks. Very fun.”

“That’s cool. Do you spend time with the others a lot?”

Gus shrugged. “More now that I am close. Before I was very far away, and I only see them rarely. On Skype.” He gave Zoe a smile. “Reed is very kind. I think they are still seeing Chiv. Reed is.. Unique. Last time we see each other, Reed wears yellow sparkly nails?” His face went a little pink. “They painted the yellow on my nails. It comes off after two days washing dogs, but it was nice.”

Zoe looked down at her own nails, broken and bitten with chipped pink polish. “Maybe we can do our nails or something.”

“I would like this,” Gus said, smiling brightly. “Paint makes them very smooth and nice.”

“It does, yeah.”

After the walk, Zoe and Gus ducked into a coffee shop to warm up a little. Gus headed to the counter to buy their coffee; Zoe made a note to pay him back. She didn’t know the going rate for a dog groomer, but she knew she had more than enough money to spend on Starbucks. 

Gus handed her a vanilla latte. “What did you get?” Zoe asked. 

“Raspberry mocha. There is whipped cream and chocolate on top.” He held it out to her. “Want to try?”

Zoe did. The drink was so sweet her lips puckered a little. She smiled at Gus, a genuine smile. “That’s so sweet!”

“Is good, yes?”

“Very good.” Zoe thought she ought to brush her teeth later. Twice. 

“How does walk make you feel?” Gus asked. 

“Fine, I guess.”

“How do you feel about seeing people?” 

Zoe didn’t understand. 

“Sveta sends me a text just now. She is finished with working and will take Sofia to the park soon. Would you like to join them?”

Zoe thought about it. 

It felt sort of nice to be out. Walking. Getting coffee. Talking a little. 

“Okay. Sure.”

“I will be right back.” Gus hurried to the bar and returned a few minutes later with a drink carrier, with one coffee and a kid’s hot chocolate. He put his own drink in the carrier and asked Zoe if she wouldn’t mind holding Pampushka’s leash. 

Pampushka was a good walker, Zoe thought. She didn’t pull. She stopped sometimes to smell things, but mostly she just stayed close to Gus and Zoe. 

“How long have you had Pampushka?”

“Since I was eighteen,” Gus answered. “She was a rescue. They find her very dirty, living under a truck. She was small, still a puppy, when dad and I adopted her.”

“Did you train her yourself?”

“Yes, she knows many tricks,” Gus said. “She is good girl. Very good. She knows always if I need help, if things become too dark.”

Zoe nodded. “I’m glad you found each other.”

And she genuinely was. 

It was weird. To feel something like “I’m glad you have an emotional support dog.” To feel something positive at all.

Gus and Zoe met up with Sveta and Sofia at the entrance to a park about ten minutes later. Sveta smiled brightly at Gus, and Sofia ran up to pet Pampushka. 

“Hello Zoe,” Sveta said. She looked… so different. Her hair was down; Zoe had never realized how long it was before. She had a little bit of makeup on as well; mascara and lipstick. And she had on a pair of cute boots, not the sneakers Zoe was used to seeing. “How is your holiday?”

“It’s alright. How are you?”

Sveta smiled. “Happy to come outside. Is not cold yet. Sofia likes the park, and the dog.” She smiled at Gus who was talking to Sofia in rapid Ukrainian about the dog (or so Zoe assumed). Pampushka seemed to be loving the extra attention. “Yesterday we have dinner with friends. She makes a turkey? It was good. Very… cooked.”

“That sounds nice,” Zoe said. 

Gus said something that made Sofia giggle, and she said, “You’re so silly!” and then laughed some more. 

Sveta was beaming at them.

“He’s good with her,” Zoe said. 

“Yes. Very good. He is patient with children.” Sveta tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “She likes him. His English is very better than mine, and this helps her I think. She has hard time in kindergarten, not knowing words… Gus has helped.”

And suddenly Zoe wondered if... Maybe Sveta  _ liked _ Gus. 

She had on makeup. She smiled at Gus, like, a lot. 

Apparently it wasn’t weird for Sveta to text him to get coffee; Gus knew her order and bought something for Sofia too. 

Huh. 

“Thank you for coffee, Gus,” Sveta said then. “You remember I hate whipped cream. It leaves strange taste in mouth.”

“Of course,” Gus said. “I hope is okay I bring hot chocolate for Sofia?”

Sveta nodded. “Yes, is okay. She likes it. Thank you.”

Speaking of Sofia, she appeared, holding her hot chocolate in both hands, and smiled at Zoe. “Mama says you gave me my doll,” She said, smiling. “I love her. She is so pretty. Thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome,” Zoe said. “I will take a look at home. I might have some clothes for her.”

Sofia smiled even wider. “Thank you, Miss Zoe.”

Zoe smiled. “You can just call me Zoe, okay?”

She nodded. 

The five of them walked through the park, warm drinks in hand. The weather was cool but still sunny. The leaves still on the trees were lovely and warm colors.

She smiled and talked with Sveta and Gus. Both of them seemed happy to include her in their conversation. Sveta was saying she was hoping to take a few courses at the community college soon. She was considering getting a job as a CNA. Zoe thought that was a great idea. She didn’t know a lot about the pay for housekeepers, but she imagined it wasn’t much. Especially when you had a little kid to care for. 

She made a mental note to give Sveta a huge bonus for Christmas.

Sofia all but dragged Zoe into a game of fetch with Pampushka after a while, and the two of them took turns launching a tennis ball for Pampushka to chase and fetch. 

Sofia’s pitching wasn’t as good as Zoe’s, but she was enthusiastic, and that seemed to suit Pampushka fine. She always brought the ball right back, sometimes stopping to nuzzle Sofia’s arm or try to lick her ears. 

“Silly puppy,” Sofia said, giggling as she petted Pampushka’s head. “Pretty dog.”

“She’s very smart too,” Zoe said, nodding. For some reason she felt the need to tell Sofia that girls weren’t just pretty. Probably something Hannah had said to her once, about feeling like the only thing people wanted out of girls was pretty. Hannah was a genius, so Zoe could see why that might have been frustrating. 

“She is very smart,” Sofia nodded. “She always listens. Good listener.”

“And she knows how to listen to two languages,” Zoe said. 

“Like me!” Sofia smiled at Zoe. “Am  _ I _ smart?”

“You sure are. You’re a genius.”

“Mama!” Sofia yelled at Sveta who was sitting on a bench with Gus not far away. “Do you know I’m smart like Pampushka?”

Zoe laughed. 

It was the best she had felt in weeks. Months. 

She almost felt… normal. 

Like herself, from before. A person who was typical, normal… someone who wasn’t broken. 

But as soon as the thought occurred to her… it was like everything good from the day hollowed out. 

She was exhausted. 

She didn’t know how she’d have the energy to get back to Gus’s place. How she’d have the energy to stand up. Zoe thought maybe she would just lie down in the grass and die or something. She was so beat. 

Pampushka gave Zoe a wet doggy kiss that startled her a bit, and then woofed over in Gus’s direction.

He seemed to know it was time to go. He gave Sofia a high five, and Sveta a hug, and Zoe waved to them both before following Gus back home. 

“Did you have nice time?”

Zoe nodded. She tried to smile. “You and Sveta seem to like each other, huh?”   


Gus nodded enthusiastically. “Sveta is very kind woman. Caring. She has hard life before Sofia is born, and works very hard.” He smiled. “Is nice to speak to someone in my own language sometimes. It is difficult, to never use it.”

Zoe nodded. Then she remembered something suddenly. “Connor knew the Ukrainian word for ‘sandwiches.’ That day, when you met Sveta.”

Gus nodded. “He has been trying to learn.” He smiled at Zoe. “He is not very good, but I try to be encouraging. I was not very good with English when I first try it.” He touched Zoe’s shoulder lightly. “He is good man, our brother, but impatient. He wants everything to happen quickly. When he is growing back his eye, he complains and complains that it took too long. He forgets that for most, it would not grow back at all.” 

Zoe was well acquainted with her brother’s impatient bullshit. “He wants me to to just… get over the fact that he’s back with Evan. And when I first moved into my apartment, he’d just… show up and demand that I talk to him.”

Gus nodded. “Impatient. He does not like to wait. It’s unfair to you, that he pushes. I try to make him stop, when I see him do this.”

Zoe really… appreciated that. 

It was nice, having someone in her corner. 

“Do you and Connor ever… Fight? Argue?”

Gus nodded. “I tried to kill him once.” His smile vanished.

Zoe stopped in her tracks for a moment. “Seriously?”

Gus nodded, his face solemn. “It was a very dark time.”

Zoe knew the cliff notes version of Gus’s life: Seamus gave him to some monks to protect him as a baby, he was kidnapped and brainwashed and tortured by Proletheans into his teens, and met Connor when he was close to 18. But she didn’t know he’d actually tried to kill Connor once. 

That was. 

A feeling she could relate to, honestly. She’d thought about killing Connor, like honestly killing him, more than a handful of times. Especially when she first found out he wasn’t actually dead for those three years. 

“We argue a few times about you,” Gus went on. “And about Evan, sometimes. Connor still has much anger about what happened at DYAD. He thinks he knows best what is needed to help, and sometimes we disagree.”

Zoe nodded. She’d…

Well she’d been hoping for something.

Stupid. Or petty. 

Dumb sibling stuff like finishing the milk or running late or something.

Because Zoe and Connor had had some insanely stupid fights over the years. Like incredibly stupid. Once they had a screaming match because Connor didn’t like how Zoe had parked her car. 

And it might have been… nice to see that Connor wasn’t just magically the perfect sibling with Gus. The sibling he wasn’t to Zoe. 

But maybe they had some kind of freaky twin thing going on that made them invincible to sibling idiocy. 

“When we are nineteen, Connor and I argue much. Much arguing. Dad made us have separate rooms after a while that summer. We would argue into the night. Much yelling.”

“What about?”

Gus sort of smiled. “English.”

“The entire language?”

Gus chuckled, nodding. “I was working on my GED at the time, and Connor had finished his first year of college. He was… what is word I am wanting? A  _ total douchebag _ .”

Zoe snorted. “Sorry, what?”

Gus rolled his eyes. “He was… very into poetry? And he smoked these horrible cigarettes for some of the summer. He thought he was very, very smart now, going to college. And if I asked a question about an assignment or a word I do not know, Connor would be very frustrated. Impatient. He thought I was very stupid for interrupting his deep thoughts.”

Zoe remembered trying to get his help on a math assignment in ninth grade only to be yelled at because she didn’t understand graphing well and Connor whipped through the problems in seconds. The argument ended in tears, and Zoe’s calculator got broken.  “Yeah. That sounds like him.”

“We spent some time fighting with each other. We would try to hurt each other, say horrible things. Refuse to talk.”

Zoe frowned. 

She and Connor? They still did that. Whenever they saw each other. 

“Dad did not like us fighting.”

“Our dad…” Zoe started, and Gus fixed his attention on her, his expression soft. Zoe cleared her throat. The words didn't come easily. “Hated it when we fought. He’d usually blame Connor, ground him. He…” Zoe didn’t know how to explain that one of the few things that Zoe and Connor could agree on for most of their teens was that Larry hated Connor. Zoe shook her head. “I’m sorry that you and Connor would fight. Did you make up? When you were nineteen?”

“Yes. This takes time, which he did not like very much. But we are okay. He is more patient with me now.”

Zoe nodded. 

“He will learn to be patient with you too,” Gus said as they arrived at his building. “I have faith.”

Zoe tried to smile at him. 

But she was so tired. 

“You had a long day,” Gus said gently when they made it back to his apartment. “How do you feel?”

“Tired,” Zoe admitted. 

“Go lay down. Rest. I will make dinner, yes?”

Zoe nodded. “That…that would be wonderful.” She turned to Gus and gave him a quick tight hug. “Thank you. For being patient with me.”

Gus smiled at her.

* * *

 

Zoe woke up screaming. 

Screaming so much, so loud that her throat felt like it was ripping open, like her skull was fracturing, like she was dying. 

Her hands, her shirt, they were covered in blood, in her mom’s blood, Hannah had to wash it out of her hair, it was everywhere and it was brown and her mother’s eyes, her eyes went dull and glassy and there was all of this blood and her dad was crying he didn’t even cry at Connor’s funeral he was in total denial he was in total denial. 

There was a warm weight wrapping around her shoulders and something cold and wet touching her hand. 

“You are okay. You are safe.”

She felt sick she felt broken she felt like she was dying. 

Gus said words that Zoe couldn’t understand and it took her a long time to realize it was Ukrainian, he was speaking softly in Ukrainian, and it was strangely comforting. 

She had cried all over his t-shirt. It was soft against her cheek, and it smelled like the vanilla and lavender fabric softener on his sheets. 

“Sorry,” She choked out. “S-sorry. I woke you, I…”

“You are okay,” Gus said, squeezing her tighter. “You just had a dream. It’s alright.”

Zoe nodded. She rested her head against his shoulder, hugging him back tightly. “I am the worst houseguest.”

“Do not say this.”

“I just woke you screaming in the middle of the night.”

“You are my sister. You can wake me screaming anytime.”

Zoe didn’t know what to say to that. She didn’t feel like Gus’s sister. She felt like garbage with a broken brain. 

After they sat for a while, and Zoe calmed down, she excused herself to the bathroom, stopping first in her bag to palm her emergency stash of pills. 

Gus was nice and sweet and he obviously cared, but Zoe had a tried and true method of getting back to sleep after a nightmare and it didn’t involve praying or dogs. 

In the bathroom, Zoe shoved a white pill into her mouth and chewed it. It was chalky and bitter, so she took gulps of water until her mouth didn’t taste awful anymore. Then she splashed cold water on her face, trying to wipe away the redness around her eyes. Her lip was bleeding. She must have chewed it until it bled. 

Gus was standing outside of the bathroom, his face pale and anxious and Zoe hated how much he looked like Connor just then. It was like getting punched. 

“What can I do?”

“Nothing,” She said, shrugging. “I’m okay.”

Gus looked at her sadly. “It’s okay to not be okay.”

Zoe frowned. “I’m sick of not being okay.”

Gus nodded. “I know this feeling very well.” He gave her a timid smile. “Do you want to try and sleep?”

Zoe shook her head. Even chewed, it would take a little while before she would feel anything from the pill. 

They agreed to watch an episode of  _ The Office.  _ Gus explained that he liked that Pam Beesly was quiet, but still funny, and the two of them huddled under blankets and watched as Pam drew a picture of the man who flashed Phyllis, but she made it look like Dwight with a mustache. 

Zoe laughed. 

She laughed and laughed and laughed when Dwight realized the joke at the end of the episode. 

The next episode began to autoplay, but Gus hit pause. The subtitles at the bottom of the screen stilled. Zoe smiled at that too. They never stayed that still. 

“I know you’re high,” Gus said quietly. 

“I’m not.”

“Please do not lie,” He said, his voice still soft and kind and understanding. Zoe hated it. She didn’t deserve it and she hated it. “What did you take?”

Zoe frowned. 

“I am not judging. I am asking so that you are safe. What did you take?”

She clenched and unclenched her fingers. Her nose felt cold, and she felt calm. Chill. Her head was in a protective bubble, a helmet. “Oxy.”

“How much?”

“Just one.”

Gus frowned. “Are you going to take more?”

Zoe shrugged. 

“I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“I’m want very badly not to feel anything at all.”

Gus’s frown seemed to deepen. “It hurts worse when you don’t feel it for a while.” He put his hand on top of Zoe’s for a moment. “I think you know this too.”

Zoe rolled her eyes. After a little while she couldn’t keep them open, so Gus led her to bed.

* * *

 

When she woke up, Zoe’s mouth was dry and the sun was too bright. She groaned, and was startled when suddenly Pampushka was licking her ears. 

“Stop,” Zoe whined, sitting up and stroking the dog’s head. She blinked a few times, and eventually Gus came into focus, standing in the doorway. “Morning,” She said. 

“Good morning. Can I come sit?”

Zoe nodded. “It’s your room.”

Gus was frowning when he sat. “We must talk about last night.”

Zoe frowned. 

“I worry you will hurt yourself if you keep taking drugs and drinking so you don’t have to feel.” Gus tucked a piece of hair behind his ear. “I am happy to have you here. You can stay however long you need. It is better for you, not being alone I think. But.” He cleared his throat. “You cannot do drugs here.”

Zoe knew her reaction wasn’t appropriate. She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms and scoffed. “Oh my god, chill. It was one pill.”

“I understand not wanting to feel pain and darkness,” Gus said. “I understand. But if you want to be here, you cannot take drugs.”

“Fine,” Zoe said. She was on her feet. She was grabbing her bag. 

Fine. 

She would just.

Go.

Because this was a stupid idea anyway. She wasn’t supposed to be here, she wasn’t supposed to look at this face ever again, she’d fucked up and she’d just go home it wasn’t like she was an addict, it wasn’t like that for her. She just wanted to take the edge off like, for fuck’s sake, she was allowed. She was fucking allowed. This wasn't like with Connor, coming home and starting fights and wrecking everything by being high for like an entire year. It was one pill, one time.

“Zoe.”

“What?” She snapped, throwing her bag over her shoulder. “What do you want from me?”

“I want to help you.”

“No, you don’t. You want me to just… be different, be fine, and I’m fucking not okay. I’m not fine, I’m not going to be fine, probably ever. So just. Leave me alone.”

Gus frowned, following her as she crossed his apartment to grab her shoes and get out of here she had to get out of here she had to leave she had to do she was hurting and embarrassed and she had to fucking leave. 

“Zoe,” Gus said gently. “Please just. Talk to me. I do not mean to upset you. Can we please just talk?”

“About what?”

“Why are you pushing everyone away?”

Zoe froze. 

Gus pushed on. “You won’t speak to Connor, to Hannah, to Evan. You take drugs instead of talk to me about your nightmares. Why?”

“I don’t… I can’t talk to Evan and Connor.”

“Why?”

“Because Evan got my parents fucking murdered, and Connor is okay with that. And I can’t… I can’t forgive them. I can’t. I’m all alone, I have nobody, because of Evan.”

Gus looked sad, like he might honestly cry. He approached her cautiously, arms up defensively.  “You are not alone, Zoe. You are not. I know this feeling, but I promise it is not true.”

“Yes. I am. I’ve got nobody. There’s nobody who would give a shit if I disappeared tomorrow, and everyone who says they care is fucking lying. They’re lying. There’s not one single person who’d pick me first.”

“What about Hannah?” Gus said. 

“Don’t talk about Hannah.”

“Hannah loves you. She loves you deeply. Her heart is broken without you.”

“Shut up about Hannah.”

“She loves you and you hurt her.” 

“Stop.”

“Connor loves you and wants to help, and you are angry so you hurt him. You tell him you’re not family.”

“Enough.”

“You hurt yourself and others because you hurt in your spirit.”

“ _ Stop it. _ ”

“You-”

She didn’t know what he was going to say next because she punched him right in the face. 

If there was any doubt in Zoe’s might that she was clearly fucking suicidal, punching a trained assassin in the face probably should have confirmed that for her. 

Gus immediately had her in a headlock and Zoe honestly hoped maybe he’d just kill her and that would be that. Break her neck, put her down, let her out of this nightmare.

Instead he said, voice quiet, “You will hurt your hand doing this like this. Your thumb needs to be outside of your fist.”

“What?”

Gus let her go. He took her fist in his hand, folding her fingers over, and placing her thumb outside of her fingers. “When you punch, your thumb must be outside. If you hit with thumb inside, you will break it.”

Zoe stared at him, and then back at her closed and aching fist. Gus’s nose was bleeding. “Oh my god,” She said softly. “Oh my god. Gus, I am so sorry I… I don’t… I’m so… Are you okay?” She was breaking down. She was dissolving into tears, her legs weren’t holding her up, and Gus guided her to the couch and she just… sobbed. She cried harder than she’d cried in ages, in months, maybe years. 

“You are okay.”

“I’m not. I’m a mess… I’m just.” She hiccupped, wiping her face only to find fresh tears already forming. “I’m just. So angry.”

Gus nodded. 

“I don’t know how to make it stop. I’m pissed off all of the time. I just… all I want is for everyone to hurt as much as I do. I hate it. I hate that I’m like this.”

Gus pulled her into a hug. “You must rage for a time, then healing comes.” He let her pull away, and he patted her cheek softly. “It is time for healing soon, yes? We work together for healing?”

“I don’t understand why you want to help me. I’ve been awful to you. I just  _ punched _ you.”

Gus smiled. “You are my sister. I love you. I care.”


	4. Looking Like Everybody

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zoe, Pampushka, and Sveta have a girls' day.

Zoe resumed her puppy routine that Monday. Literally. She followed Gus around like a puppy, but also spent most of her time around them.

She went to work with Gus. She followed instructions, walked Pampushka, and helped to rangle an excitable labradoodle who refused to be distracted from the fact that he was supposed to be taking a bath. 

It was… actually kind of fun.

Zoe liked dogs. She liked spending time with Gus, liked the fact that he gave clear and concise instructions…

She also found herself really liking it when he told her that she was much better at this than Connor was. That made her smile despite herself, before she went back to toweling off a German Shepherd called Tootsie who had peanut butter breath. 

After working all day, Gus and Zoe ordered Chinese for dinner. 

“Do you usually take this many clients every day?”

Gus nodded, then added, “Sometimes more.”

“Popular guy.”

“Yes, I am extremely popular. Pampushka likes this. She has many friends.” As if on cue, the dog barked and wagged her tail at Gus. “She’s a very good girl.”

“She is.” Zoe took a bite of her rice and then said. “Have you ever thought of expanding?”

Gus nodded, but explained that he’d spent much of his savings on moving the business to Boston. “Someday, I hope to be bigger. Maybe move into training and daycare. But this is good for now. I am content.”

Zoe nodded. “What’s the dream job?”

Gus sort of shrugged, a little sheepish. “The dream job is just playing with dogs all day.”

“Like a daycare?”

Gus smiled, nodding. 

“Those are cool. Helps socialize dogs too.”

And that night, she found herself googling the licensing and zoning required for a dog daycare. Just to see. 

The thing was, and it was a fairly impulsive thought… Zoe had a lot of money. Like. A lot. And she’d get even more on her twenty-first birthday. 

She found herself wondering, honestly, if this was an investment she could make. 

And realized she wasn’t entirely sure if she was wondering about a dog care business, or this relationship with Gus. Most of her thought this was temporary. That he’d get sick of her hanging around and she’d go back to never leaving her apartment unless it was to drink…

But she wondered.

Maybe this was something worth getting invested in.

* * *

 

A few days into this new routine, Gus not-so-subtly suggested that Zoe get coffee with Sveta one afternoon. He insisted, really, and told her to go ahead and take Pampushka with her, which instantly made her know something was up. 

“Why do you want me to take your dog?” 

Gus frowned. “I have a skittish chihuahua later. Scared of big dogs.”

“Uh-huh.” Zoe wasn’t convinced. “You take Pampushka everywhere. Like. Literally.”

“And I go to therapy after.”

Zoe frowned. “Shouldn’t Pampushka go with you then?”

Gus smiled at her. “Normally she comes with me, yes. But maybe she needs a girls’ 

day.”

Zoe’s eyes narrowed. “A girls’ day?”

And Gus gave up his big evil plan in a second. “I must go to therapy, and I am thinking that you might need Pampushka’s company more than I will while I go.”

Zoe shook her head. “I’m really fine. I just freaked out the other day. Really.”

Obviously he didn’t buy that for a second, but Zoe appreciated that he didn’t just call her a liar to her face. “Or…”

“Or?”

“You could come with me to therapy.”

Zoe stared. “No thanks. I don’t want to hog your time.”

“No, no, that is not what I mean.” Gus gave her this sort of sad half smile. “ERAS has… on staff therapists to help with… everything that happened with DYAD.”

“ERAS?”

“Beanpole and his people. They were ESM, before.”

Zoe frowned. 

“You do not have to go,” Gus said. “But I have had the therapy for a long time, and it helps me.”

Zoe didn’t know how to tell him she didn’t know if she even wanted help. 

But she had gone a few long days without drinking herself to sleep or getting high alone in her apartment… 

“Maybe. But not today.”

Gus nodded. “Soon?”

“Yeah. Maybe soon.”

* * *

She got coffee with Sveta that afternoon (and insisted on paying). Sofia had a playdate with a friend from school, and Zoe found herself grinning awkwardly at Sveta when she realized it was just the two of them.

Well. 

The two of them and Pampushka. A girls’ day indeed. 

“How was your weekend?” Zoe asked Sveta, taking a small sip of her latte. 

Sveta smiled, looking almost shy. “Nice. I went shopping and working. Sofia calls her grandmama on the computer. We have pleasant time.”

“She talks to your mother?” Zoe asked. 

Sveta nodded. She looked off, face blank, and patted Pampushka’s head a few times. “I am not knowing who Sofia’s father is. Before she is born, I have many men.”

Zoe nodded. Sveta looked around, like she was uncertain about the words she was saying. Like she hadn’t expected to say anything of the sort, ever. 

Zoe knew the feeling. 

It was a lot like drunkenly joking to Alana Beck that her phone was dead like her parents. Unexpectedly powerful. 

“I do not like speaking to mother,” She went on. “I am here because she sends me. I believed, at first, that she is not knowing what will happen to me here. But that is not true. She always knew.” She toyed with the sleeve of her coffee cup. “I do not speak to her. I still have much anger. But Sofia must know she has other family, so they talk on Sundays.”

Zoe bit her lip. “I don’t know if I could do that. That must be… really difficult.”

Sveta nodded. “I pray on this for a long time. I do not forgive her, not yet. But I try for my Sofia.”

“That’s… amazing. You’re incredible.”

Sveta’s cheeks went pink. “I’m not.”

“You are,” Zoe said, genuinely. “The stuff that’s happened to you… I could never do what you’re doing. I could never just… I could never do what you do. Be how you are with Sofia.” Zoe felt a bit like she had swallowed a nest of angry bees. “Do you remember my other brother?”

“The American?” Zoe nodded. “He has little patience.”

Zoe snorted at that. “You’re not wrong about that.”

Sveta looked confused. “What means this?”

“It’s a silly way of saying that you’re right. He’s  _ very _ impatient.”

Sveta smiled at her. 

Zoe tried to swallow down the feeling that she was about to word vomit all over her maid. She sighed. “I’m not… I’m not talking to my brother right now.”

Sveta nodded, like she was listening. 

“Our… our parents died a few months ago. They were… they were killed.” Zoe took a sip of her coffee, while Sveta waited patiently. Pampushka nudged Zoe’s hand for pets. “They were murdered, and it’s… Someone I thought was my friend is the reason that they were targeted.” She took another sip of her coffee. “And my brother is in love with him.”

Sveta looked sad. “That is difficult.”

“I can’t… I can’t forgive him for that. He’s in love with the person who got my parents killed and… And every time I’ve seen Connor since, I’m just. So angry. Because my parents are gone, and he’s… Screwing their murderer.”

Sveta nodded. “You think he must not care about you, to do this.”

“Yeah.” She swallowed more coffee. “He doesn’t care about me.”

Sveta put a hand gently on Zoe’s shoulder. “You have told him this?”

“Once. But I was… I was just trying to hurt him. I’m… I’m so angry at him.”

Sveta gave her shoulder a squeeze. “You can have anger. You are allowed to have anger. But do not take the anger and turn it on you. It makes things worse. I know.” She squeezed Zoe’s shoulder again, then pulled her hand away. 

“Thanks.”

Zoe and Pampushka arrived back at Gus’s place after a long walk and playing in the park for a while. Zoe and Sveta actually ran into Joe and Rory the Irish Wolfhound in the park. Joe asked where Gus was, and he seemed a little disappointed when he learned that they were watching Pampushka for a few hours. 

“Oh,” Joe said, rubbing Pampushka’s belly. “Well um. Tell him hi from me?”

“We will do this,” Sveta said, smiling at Zoe strangely. “I’m sure he will be sorry to have missed you.”

Joe nodded. “Are you two related?”

Sveta shook her head. “No, we are only friends.” Sveta nudged Zoe slightly, and Zoe remembered, awkwardly, that she’d told Sveta that she was Gus’s sister. 

“I’m um. I’m his sister? Adopted. It’s complicated.”

Joe nodded. “That’s cool. Nice to meet you.” 

On the walk back to Gus’s place, Sveta cracked up at Zoe. “You are so shy around Joe!”

Zoe shrugged. “He’s got a big dog, I dunno.”

“He is liking Gus very much I think,” Sveta said. “He is very disappointed not to see him.  _ Very _ disappointed.”

Zoe nodded. “Does that… bug you?”

“What means ‘bug’?”

“Bother? Annoy?”

“Why am I being annoyed that Joe is liking Gus? Is a good thing, I think, that people like Gus. Gus is a good man.”

“Maybe I’m just… a jealous person then,” Zoe said, shrugging. She thought back to the times she’d spotted other girls eyeing Hannah, checking out her butt, things like that. They’d gone to the LGBT Center’s Winter Formal together right before finals last year, and Zoe ended up getting her lipstick all over Hannah’s face because she kissed her whenever she spotted someone checking her out. 

Hannah thought it was silly. “Babe. I only have eyes for you.”

“Yeah, me and Dr. McAllistair.”

“I mean, she’s hot but she’s like… old. And way too straight. Besides, she’s got nothing on you.” Hannah had pulled her in for a kiss then, in front of everyone, and Zoe had started to laugh, feeling silly about the whole thing. 

 

“A little jealous is not too bad,” Sveta said. “But too much is dangerous. Like anger. It clouds and hurts.”

Zoe nodded. “Thank you… for talking with me today.”

Sveta smiled shyly. “You are a woman, Zoe. Very good. I am pleased we are friends.”

“Me too. And thank you.” Zoe tucked some hair behind her ears. “Give Sofia my love.”

“Always.”

They hugged briefly, and then Sveta patted Pampushka’s head and headed off. When Zoe let herself into Gus’s apartment, he was on the telephone. 

His eyes lit up when Pampushka bounded inside, and she ran to him immediately, jumping up on Gus. He pets her affectionately, still holding the phone to his ear. 

“I understand that you worry, but it is okay. And yes she is here now.” Pampushka jumped down, and Gus gave Zoe a wave now that he had a free hand. “Please give my love to Heidi. Thank you for talking. Love you much. Bye.”

“Hi. How was your appointment?” Zoe said. 

Gus gave her a weary smile. “Is fine. I am a little tired.” He gave Pampushka a kiss on her nose. “Dad calls me, after the therapy. He was surprised I do not bring Pampushka with me.”

“Was it okay?” Zoe asked softly. 

Gus nodded. “Yes.”  He petted Pampushka’s head a few more times. “How is Sveta? Did you have nice day?”   


Zoe smiled. “She’s good. We talked a bit about her family.”

Gus’s expression clouded. 

“Yeah. Exactly. Her mom sounds… like a real piece of work.”

Gus nodded solemnly. 

“Oh, and we ran into Joe and and Rory. Joe says hello.”

Gus smiled. “I like Joe. He is nice man. Good with dogs.”

“He asked if you were related to Sveta. I think we confused him when we explained.”

Gus laughed sort of weakly. 

“Are you alright, Gus?” Zoe asked. 

He nodded, still petting Pampushka. 

Zoe bit her lip. “I… What can I do?”

“I am okay. Sometimes, I am troubled after therapy. There is much darkness.”

Zoe nodded. “Can I… Can I give you a hug?”

Gus’s face sort of melted into a smile. “I would like that very much.”

So Gus stood up, and Zoe gave him a tight hug, and he hugged back equally as tight and… Zoe felt him relax after a few minutes. And she started to relax as well. She and Gus ate Lucky Charms for dinner in their pajamas, sitting huddled under piles of super soft blankets, watching  _ A Charlie Brown Christmas _ . Pampushka sat between them, seeming to bask in the glory of two people petting her at once. 

“I always sort of hated Christmas,” Zoe said quietly. “It was always a big stressful thing with my family. The year before I turned seven, Connor and I spent two weeks being super scared that Santa would only bring us coal.”

“Were you naughty?”

“Not as much as he was. He threw a printer at his teacher.”

Gus looked a bit shocked. “How old is he?”

“Not quite eight?” Zoe said. “He swore he only knocked it off of her desk, but Mrs. G…. that’s the teacher? She called our mom swearing he just outright chucked it.”

Gus frowned. “Was she hurt?”

“No, nobody got hurt. Though… I think it might have been the first time my mom actually followed through on a threat to spank Connor.”

Gus nodded. 

“We both got presents though. No coal. Our parents always spoiled us.” She shrugged, biting her lip to keep it from quivering. Suddenly thinking about being a little kid at Christmas hurt too much. “So um. Do you like Christmas?”

“Very much,” Gus said, nodding. “For many years, I only see Connor on Christmas and summer. It was nice to have all of us together.”

Zoe smiled slightly, finding that somewhere in the back of her mind, she had wondered what he’d done for holidays. She knew from Hannah and Reed that Ben’s parents were never around. 

She might hate him but she was glad Connor didn’t spend his Christmases alone.

“I am thinking I will get Christmas tree soon.”

Zoe smiled. “A real one? Or an artificial one?”

Gus shrugged, pointing to the television. “I am not sure such a small tree would survive. Pampushka might try to play fetch.”

Zoe laughed. “I have like… so many boxes of ornaments, if you need any.”

Gus thanked her. “I would like to find some spider webs for my tree.”

“Spider webs?”

Gus nodded enthusiastically. “When I am small, the monks tell a story about the Christmas Spider. A widow and her children are poor, and she finds a pine cone in her house. It grows into a tree by Christmas, but she is too poor to decorate it. The children are very sad. But in the night, a spider weaves webs all over the tree. And when they open the windows and the sun shines in, the webs become silver and gold, and they have the most beautiful tree.”

Zoe smiled. “That’s an awesome story.”

“In Ukraine, we will put spider webs on the trees.”

“We’ll have to find you some webs then.”

Gus smiled. “Thank you for… nice evening, Zoe. It is very kind of you.”

Zoe felt her face heat up. “You’d have done the same thing for me.”

 

* * *

The next week, Zoe worked with Gus every day. It was busy before the holidays, apparently. People wanted their animals looking cute for photos and family gatherings. 

Zoe and Gus were engaged in a mild argument the whole time because Gus kept insisting that he needed to pay Zoe for the work she was doing, and Zoe kept reminding him she could comfortably afford to live well into her nineties with the money she had. 

“You are working with me, you deserve pay.”

“You’re letting my sleep in your house. That’s more than enough.”

They hadn’t really talked about it, but Zoe hadn’t left Gus’s apartment to return to hers since Thanksgiving. 

“Is that okay…?” She said then, rinsing shampoo out of the coat of a docile golden retriever named, of all things, Larry. Larry was a good boy. He sat very still and yawned sometimes. His owner was an older gentleman named Bert who whistled while he dropped Larry off. “Is it okay that I’m still staying with you?”

“Of course,” Gus answered. “You will go when you are ready, and you are welcome to stay as long as you need.”

So she stayed. And worked, washing dogs and petting them while Gus clipped their nails.  Zoe got used to the fact that she would often find dog treats in her pockets. 

She was still angry and hurting. 

But it wasn’t all of the time. 

“Do Evan and Connor see therapists at ERAS?” She asked a couple of days later.

Gus nodded.

“I can’t see someone who is seeing either of them… I can’t. I need someone who is on my side.”

Gus seemed to think that was sensible, and he coached her through a phone call setting up her intake appointment with a doctor named Thomas Green in the second week of December. 

When she hung up and let out a shaky, nervous breath Gus patted her hand. “You know I am on your side, yes?”

“Yeah, but you’re also on  _ his. _ ”

“There are many sides I can be on.”

Zoe frowned. “I just can’t think that way.”


	5. I'm Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things get better but then much worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alcohol content warning is especially high this chapter.

Hannah was in New York for a few days. NYU and Columbia were both already recruiting her for graduate programs, Connor knew. She wasn’t even done with her junior year of college, but she was being courted by PhD programs. 

Like Connor knew she was smart. He knew that. She’d saved Torpedo and Lucas with a cure breakthrough days after learning about the whole picture. He’d known she was smart.

But now she’d published a paper with Reed and Evan on the treatment they had developed for the clone illness, and now every university with a biology program worth their salt was trying to get her to come to them for her graduate studies. 

Evan had mentioned that she’d already gotten calls from Oxford, Harvard, and Yale. Reed was getting the same kind of stuff too, they’d complained that they needed to start a new email folder for “annoying white dudes” who sent inquiries about their “scientific mind.” 

“I got one from Catholic university that was addressed ‘Dear Mr. Albrecht’ so it went right into the trash.”

Connor was pretty annoyed that Evan wasn’t getting the same kind of offers. He’d been equally as integral on the cure, and even Ivy was credited for her work and her medical license was reinstated. 

But. Regardless, Hannah was in New York so that some graduate schools could try to impress her. 

So naturally she was eating pizza in Connor’s apartment. She looked a bit better than she had when she was in Boston back in October; her hair was buzzed in the back again, and it looked like she had ever put a little time into styling it. 

She looked better.

Connor knew from Gus that Zoe was looking better these days too, but it drove him insane that he didn’t know that for himself. He’d had to stop himself twice that week from just getting into his car and driving to Gus’s and demanding to see her. 

He knew that was stupid. 

He knew it wouldn’t work anyway. Gus wouldn’t allow it. 

“So how was NYU?”

Hannah yawned. “Not to shit on your school, but considering how many emails I was sent, they really aren’t offering me much. I mean, come on, Yale wants to give me my own research team.”

“They do?” Connor asked. “That’s incredible.”

Hannah shrugged. “I’d love it, honestly, but… It sort of freaks me out, the way a lot of the professors talk to me? Like I… I’m just a nerd who likes science, I’m not this hotshot.”

“Maybe you ought to embrace the hotshot thing,” Connor said, smiling at her. 

Hannah snorted. “Trust me, I can’t do that. Last week I went to Lush and this cute sales-girl touched my hair to demo this sea salt spray? I started fucking crying because she touched my hair. I’m way too pathetic to be a hotshot.”

“You’re not pathetic.”

“I’m not a hotshot, though.”

“Hotshot or not, I’m glad you’re a nerd. You saved my siblings being a nerd.”

Hannah’s ears turned pink. She frowned a little. “Have you heard from Zoe at all?”

“From her? No,” Connor said. “But… she’s been staying with Gus?”

Hannah blinked in surprise. “She likes Gus. I guess it makes sense.”

“Yeah.” Connor tried to swallow down the feeling of jealousy over that. Because of course Zoe liked Gus better than she’d ever liked him. “She likes Gus.”

Hannah kind of smiled slightly. “I mean, she um… He’s sweet, and nonthreatening, and he has a dog, and clearly he loves you. Like, that was some  _ Hunger Games  _ sort of shit he pulled, volunteering to trade places with you.” Hannah sighed. “I think she liked knowing that someone cared about you that much.”

Connor felt his insides squirm a bit about that. He couldn’t quite look Hannah in the eye. 

“So um…. Is Evan considering any of the offers he’s gotten?”

“What?”

“I mean Oxford is trying to get all three of us to consider them,” Hannah said, “And I was sort of surprised he didn’t want to double up with me this weekend. Normally he’s always happy to visit you.”

“...Evan’s getting offers too?”

Hannah nodded. “Yeah I mean… of course he is. A lot of that work was his.”

Connor frowned, thinking he’d have to talk to Evan about why it was that Evan hadn’t mentioned being recruited by fucking _Oxford_. 

“Any big holiday plans?” Hannah asked. 

“Spending Christmas with Seamus and Gus. Probably Heidi and Evan too.” He frowned. “Dunno what we’ll do about Zoe though. I… I don’t want her to be alone, but I seriously doubt she’s going to come to the Sadler Christmas if Evan and I are there.”

Hannah nodded. 

“You?”

“I’m missing Hanukkah because of school, so I dunno. Probably just going to hang around with my mom and brother. I’m supposed to um…” She chewed her lip. “I’m supposed to go on a date. Back home.”

“Oh?”

Hannah shrugged. “I don’t… really want to go.”

“Why not?”

“Because… nothing about Shira Roth is what I want.” She bit her lip. Connor realized with an uncomfortable jolt that Hannah was about to start crying. “I know… I know she’s still upset and she probably doesn’t want to see me, but… if you see Zoe. Will you let her know I…”

“I will,” Connor said fiercely. “I’ll tell her. I promise.”

Hannah wiped her eyes quickly. “See? I’m not a hotshot.”

“I like that about you.”

* * *

 

The wasn’t the first time Zoe had ever been to see a therapist. 

But it was the first time since her parents died. 

And something about the fact that this Dr. Green knew that about her was sort of unnerving her a bit. 

He was an unassuming guy. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin. Nice smile. He had on a sweater that looked soft. He dressed like those hipsters who intentionally dressed like grandpas. Zoe found that… sort of relaxed her a bit. 

“So I understand you lost both of your parents this year.”

“Yeah.”

“That must have been really painful.”

Zoe shrugged sort of like… no shit. Honestly. 

“And your brother Connor? I understand that he… had been living as another clone for more than three years?”

“We thought he was dead,” Zoe said. 

“That sounds very difficult.”

“Yeah well… it wasn’t a picnic.”

“How did it make you feel to know Connor was still alive?”

“Angry,” Zoe said. “I broke his nose.” She sort of laughed hollowly. “But he can do some kind of rapid healing thing, so he was fine in a few hours, I guess.”

“I see.”

“I saw him for the first time in years, and he… got kidnapped by DYAD like. Immediately after that.”

Dr. Green nodded. 

“Because he went after me.”

“I see.” He wrote something down on his clipboard. “And I have a note that you know Evan? You two are close?”   


“We were,” Zoe said, voice flat. “He was one of my best friends. And he got my parents killed.”

Dr. Green frowned.

“He…. got Connor out of DYAD by working with my dad to trade Connor for Gus…” She shook her head. “It pissed off Dominic or whoever. The DYAD clone. He sent someone to kill our mom. She died in front of me. And my dad… he died going after Dominic.”

“That’s a lot to go through in such a short period of time. How have you been coping?” Dr. Green asked her. 

“I haven’t,” Zoe said. And she realized, suddenly, how honest that was. “I just. I haven’t.”

“What have you been doing? You must be doing something to feel better.”

Zoe shrugged. “Drinking. Drugs, sometimes. Avoiding everyone I know. I had a girlfriend.”

“Oh?”

“I dumped her.”

“What did that decision feel like to you?”

Zoe chewed her lip. “Like I was saving her a lot of trouble. Like... “ Zoe ran a hand through her hair. “She worked for DYAD. She’s… She’s Hannah. She’s the one who worked out the clone cure. She’s brilliant and kind and… when I looked at her, I just. She worked for these people who killed my parents. And she didn’t know that, and she didn’t do that, but she… She wanted to, to… to look out for me. Make sure I like, you know, ate and slept and I… I couldn’t. I couldn’t do that with her.”

“Sounds really hard. To try to juggle a relationship on top of all that happened to you.”

Dr. Green really was nice. He was kind when he said, honestly, that it seemed like Zoe was in a lot of pain, and that it might be best if she saw him more than once a week. 

He said some stuff about coping skills for PTSD and depression and Zoe. 

Zoe was never the sick one. She wasn’t the problem child. He gave her some fact sheets with ideas for coping and sleeping and another with emergency numbers on it. 

She didn’t know how to do this. Zoe had no idea how to be someone with post traumatic stress disorder. 

She spaced out so hard during the last half of her appointment that she wasn’t even positive that she remembered to set a second.

* * *

 

Gus met her in the lobby, looking a little pale but smiling, with Pampushka standing beside him. 

Pampushka hurried over to Zoe, and after giving her a hug, Zoe looked up at Gus and said quietly that she thought she ought to go back to her own apartment that night. 

“Are you sure?”

Zoe nodded. “Yeah, it’s… time I think.”

Gus squeezed her shoulder. “I trust you to take care of yourself.”

Zoe nodded. 

“I wanted to ask you about Christmas Day,” Gus said on the drive back to her apartment. “Sveta has no plans for this day, and I asked her and Sofia to come for dinner. You should come.”

“Okay.” Zoe blinked a few times. “Do you like Sveta?”

Gus nodded. “Very much. She is a good person. Sofia is a good girl. Very smart.”

“Yeah but do you  _ like _ her?”

Gus blinked. “I am not understanding.”

Zoe shook her head. “Nevermind. It’s not important.”

Gus hugged her warmly when she got out of the car, and Zoe petted Pampushka and kissed her snout before she headed upstairs to her apartment. It was completely tidy and it looked totally devoid of human presence. 

Except there was a crayon drawing on Zoe’s refrigerator. It was a drawing of a stick figure woman, petting a fluffy white dog. On the bottom, in neat handwriting, it said, “To Zoe, with love, from Sofia.”

Zoe smiled at it for a long moment. 

Then she went in her freezer and pulled out a bottle of vodka. Today was too much, too fast. She wasn’t…

She wasn’t ready.

* * *

Zoe had lost her phone.

Well it was in the apartment somewhere, but she’d lost it. 

Zoe was doing something stupid. Which was in her top three skills lately. Ironically so was dog grooming. But mostly the stupidity. 

Regardless of her missing phone, Zoe was busy being stupid and the stupidity was centered around two people who she’d brought back to her place. She thought they might be a couple or something; she didn’t fucking care. All she knew was the girl was an awesome kisser and the guy seemed really interested in getting in Zoe’s pants. 

Which Zoe was totally on board with.

She’d never had a threesome before, but frankly it seemed about time. She was young, she was hot, and most importantly… she was drunk. What time would be better than to try that out? 

When Zoe got into her bedroom, the girl was already starting to undress…

 

Not long after they finished, and Zoe was back to looking for her phone. She had no idea what time it was, and she wasn’t positive that there had been any condoms in that bedroom situation, and distantly she realized “All I Want For Christmas Is You” had been playing on repeat for an annoyingly long time. Loudly.

Where the fuck was her phone? Why was that song playing? 

Had she seriously just fucked a couple? What the hell was the matter with her, Zoe didn’t didn’t do shit like that, she was so vanilla. Once she and Evan had joked about her being “Artisanal Vanilla Bean” she was so vanilla. 

They had a long running joke that neither of them could ever see having a threeway. 

“Where do you put your focus?” Zoe had joked. 

“I know! I barely know where to put it when there’s just one other person.”

“Bisexual doesn’t mean one of each!” They’d joked for years. 

Someone was knocking loudly on her door and Zoe had to look down to see if she had clothes on (just a bra and panties, but better than nothing).

Where the fuck was her phone? 

“What?” Zoe shouted, yanking the door open. 

Her neighbor started shouting about how it was “FOUR AM” and “CHRISTMAS CAROLS ARE NOT APPROPRIATE” and “FAMILIES LIVE HERE.”

Zoe slammed the door in her face. Her head sort of swam. She needed to find her phone. 

She wandered back to her bedroom, finding her couple pulling their clothes back on, looking a bit blissed out and in the dim light Zoe realized… how much older they were. In their thirties at least. Late thirties.

She felt sort of… ill. 

“We should go. We’ve got to get the kids to daycare. Have a good one.”

Zoe let them out. 

She took a long, hot shower. Until the water ran cold. Until she was shivering and and felt sick. 

Zoe found her fucking phone, shoved between the mattress and the wall. 

She wished she had her old phone. She had saved some screenshots of texts from Hannah on that phone. They always made her feel better. 

God, she missed Hannah. She missed her soft smiles and shyness and the way their hands fit together. She missed the smell of the shampoo Hannah used, being able to steal hoodies and cardigans all the timr. 

The first time they slept together was a few weeks after they’d gotten together. Hannah was nervous; Zoe was the first person she’d slept with. They stopped a lot, talked a lot, and laughed a lot. Especially when Zoe just… couldn’t get Hannah’s bra unhooked. The pair of them collapsed on Zoe’s bed, Hannah giggling so hard Zoe worried she might genuinely pee. 

“Is it always this awkward?” Hannah asked, once Zoe finally got her bra off. 

“A little. Are you okay?”

Hannah nodded. “It’s… kind of weird, you know? Being naked in front of another person?”

Zoe nodded. “You didn’t have a naked family then?”

“God no, oh my god.”

“Me either.”

They laughed more, and Zoe sort of fell on top of Hannah trying to catch her breath… and then Hannah kissed her. 

Zoe didn’t want to think about that. She couldn’t think about that.

* * *

 

The worst part about being alone on Christmas Eve was knowing she didn’t have to be. Zoe had been invited to spend time with Gus, but she knew he was hoping to spend the day with Seamus and Heidi and Connor and Evan, and being anywhere with that ragtag group of people was not something she could handle. 

She thought about texting Hannah, just out of the blue. Hanukkah was over and she knew that the Weiss family wouldn’t be busy. 

But that was idiotic and Hannah probably hated her so Zoe parked herself in front of the television and drank her way through a festive bottle of tequila.  Last year her family went to church and Evan came over and her mom was rude to Hannah and her dad sort of couldn’t figure her out… 

Zoe took a swallow and got up. Decided she ought to get dressed. 

She was a shitty kid, not visiting on Christmas. Like come on. They’d been in the ground less than a year, and Zoe hadn’t been around in months. 

She pulled on some jeans and a sweater that she always hated but her mom had picked out for her. Pulled her shoes on. Checked her phone; there was a text from Sveta confirming that Zoe would be at Gus’s for Christmas dinner. 

Zoe said she’d be there. 

She grabbed her keys, pulling on her jacket and hat and gloves and walked a little unsteadily down the hall. 

First stop was the only gas station that was open, where Zoe bought some cheap flowers, already wilting. She paid in cash, keeping her sunglasses on, and added a cheap bottle of red wine at the last second. 

She got in her car and cranked obnoxious Christmas carols, undoing the twist top on the wine bottle and taking a long pull as she merged onto the highway. It took a little while to get to the cemetery… But the road was straight and Zoe was a good driver and she didn’t hit too much traffic. The drive was nice. It was sort of sunny. She drank some more wine, enjoying the warm sweetness. 

Zoe realized she had sort of drifted onto the shoulder a little so she corrected. The rest of the drive went smoothly. She made it to the cemetery with ease, even though she had only been a few times before. It was cold, but the wine sloshing in her belly kept her warm. Zoe stumbled out of her car, clutching the cheap gas station flowers, feeling the prickle of thorns from the roses, arriving in front of her parents’ graves only to discover she was not the first person there. 

Connor and Evan, their backs to her, hands clasped, standing in front of the headstone Zoe had picked out, which was marble and smooth and said “loving parents” that she had chosen in a funeral director’s office a few weeks after her parents died. 

Zoe stared, sort of blankly. 

Because. 

Stupidly she thought…

The night of the funeral, Hannah drove Zoe back to the safehouse. They had planned to stay at Zoe’s parents’ house, but when the got to the driveway, Zoe started to hyperventilate, and Hannah got her out of there. 

They’d had cleaners in and the place didn’t look like a crime scene anymore, but Zoe just could not go inside. She couldn’t be there. And Hannah took her to the safehouse. 

Frankly she was pretty out of it. She took a Xanax after her panic attack, and just let Hannah put her to bed in the room they’d stayed in before.  After what might have been hours or maybe just a few minutes, Connor came into the room. Zoe let him hug her. 

“Thank you for coming,” She said softly. “You were in the back of the church?”

“Yeah… there weren’t any flowers.”

“Lent.”

“What did you do with them? From the funeral home.”

Zoe sighed. There were a lot still in Hannah’s car. She donated others. She had so many flowers, despite the obituaries asking that in lieu of flowers people make small donations to a mental health charity. 

“Where… where did you have them buried?” Connor asked her.

Zoe laughed hollowly. “Next to you.”

Connor frowned. 

“It would have looked weird, not putting them there…” She shrugged. “At least Ben’s… not all alone anymore.”

“I guess.”

“I had to pick out the headstone,” Zoe said quietly. “It’s pretty. They’ll set it up in a few weeks.”

“I’m sorry you had to do this alone.”

Zoe shrugged. 

“Maybe we can visit… once everything calms down.”

Zoe nodded. Then blinked, suddenly realizing something. “Evan… he can’t go there.”

“What?”

“He used to visit, sometimes, me and him… He.” She narrowed her eyes. “He’s the reason mom and dad are dead. He’s not allowed to visit them.”

“Um…”

“You have to tell him,” Zoe said, grabbing Connor’s sleeve. “He’s done enough. He’s not allowed to be there. Ever. Promise you’ll tell him that. Promise that you won’t let him near them ever again.”

“I… yeah, I’ll tell him.”

Zoe wiped her face. “Thank you.”

 

She thought, stupidly, that Connor wouldn’t take Evan there. That this was the one line he wouldn’t cross. That this promise would have meant something to him. 

She was wrong of course. Of course. 

Of course Connor had brought him there. 

Her hands gripped the gas station flowers too hard, so hard, the thorns digging painfully into her hand. If she was in her right mind, Zoe might have gone for something devastating or horrible to announce her presence.  Instead, it came out, “Are you  _ fucking kidding me? _ ”

Connor and Evan both whipped around quickly. Evan’s face went pale; Connor’s eye went wide. “Zoe, what are you doing here?”

“Thought I’d visit my parents, since it’s Christmas. What the fuck are you doing here?”

“The same thing.”

“I’m not talking to you Connor,” Zoe snapped. She was glaring at Evan. “Why the fuck would you think you were welcome here?”

Evan seemed to shrink before Zoe’s eyes. “I’m sorry, I’ll just-”

“Oh no,” Zoe said, stepping closer and watching him flinch. “I wanna know why the fuck you think you have a right to be here.”

“Zoe back off,” Connor said. “ _ I _ brought him, I-”

“You told me you wouldn’t let him come here, so fuck you,” Zoe said. She turned back to Evan, glaring, hands clenching harder on the fucking cheap flowers so hard she felt the skin break.  “Why on earth are you here? Wasn’t getting them killed enough? Are you here to gloat or something?”

“Zoe, I-” 

His eyes had filled with tears, but there was no pity in Zoe’s heart for him. “I hate you. You ruined my family. You have no right to be anywhere near here. You shouldn’t be here, you shouldn’t be anywhere. They should have let you die. That’s what you wanted, right? That’s why you gave Gus a pocketful of pathetic suicide notes right? Why don’t you go ahead and try to finish the job this time? At least you might break your arm again-”

“Zoe, enough.” Somewhere in the time she was going at Evan, Connor had approached. He looked at her, frowning, and said, sounding distressed, “You’re drunk.”

Zoe merely blinked. “And you’re an asshole.”

“Did you seriously drive here like that?”

Zoe rolled her eyes. “Do you seriously think you have any right to judge my behavior?”

Connor started to retort, but Zoe was quicker. 

“How many times did you drive me to school high on oxy, Connor? How long did you and your boyfriend here hide the international clone conspiracy you’re a part of from me? Do I even need to mention the fact that you  _ faked your own death  _ or does that just go without saying now?”

“Stop it,” Connor said, and tried to touch her, grab her, she didn’t know. She just whacked him with the bundle of cheap gas station flowers, scattering petals all over the dry, dead grass. 

“Get the fuck away from me.”

“Stop throwing a tantrum for two seconds! Your hand is bleeding, Jesus Zoe-”

Zoe punched him, closed fist, thumb outside. 

Connor spat blood on the ground, turned to Evan and said something that Zoe didn’t catch over the sound of blood pounding in her ears, and then Connor grabbed her roughly by the arm and dragged her off toward her car. “Give me your keys.”

“No. Let go of me.”

“No.”

“You’re the one who should be fucking buried Connor, you and Evan both ought to be fucking-”

“SHUT UP.”

“The two of you should have both just-”

“SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH ZOE.”

He hadn’t screamed at her like that in years. Or shoved her like he just had, against the car. 

Zoe blinked a few times. It was probably the most normal interaction they’d had since she learned he hadn’t died. 

She shut up.

At sixteen that would have reduced her to tears.

Now it made her want to hit him again. So she did. She started wailing on his arm, screaming at the top of her lungs until he shoved her against the car again, took her keys, and pushed her into a seat. 

Zoe’s eyes traveled to see Evan still standing near her parents’ graves, arms wrapped around himself, looking horrified. 

Connor sat in the driver’s seat, breathing heavily. 

Zoe realized distantly that her hand was bleeding from where she had grabbed the flowers. It was really bleeding. 

She flexed her hand a few times. 

“Oh come on,” Connor groaned beside her, reaching over to the glove compartment and pulling out a stack of napkins. He wiped some of the blood away, looking at her hand, then gave her a fresh napkin and told her to press down. “For fuck’s sake, Zoe, what the hell was that?”

She said nothing.

“You can’t say shit like that to him,” Connor said, adjusting her rearview mirror and the driver’s seat. “You can’t. That’s cruel even for you.”

“Cruel or true?”   


“Shut up Zoe, god damn it, just stop talking.”

He took off, driving her car so aggressively that Zoe remarked ten minutes later that she drove better when she was drunk. 

“Fuck Zoe.” Connor slammed his hand against the steering wheel three times. “What the fuck is the matter with you?”

She shrugged. “Ask your boyfriend.”

“Don’t fucking talk about Evan right now.”

“You know he was like… one of my best friends right? Like we used to text basically every day. And things chilled out when he went away to school, but you know, I thought that made sense. He was busy, he was making new friends… But of course it was you. It’s always you. You can’t help yourself. I can’t have anything of my own.”

Connor shook his head, “You know I didn’t do that. I didn’t set out to take him away from you.”

“But you did!” Zoe said. “I could deal with it when it was money or hair ties but come on. He and I… Evan was one of my people, he was the only person I knew for years who… who got it.”

“I’m not the one stopping you from talking to him, and you fucking know it.”

“He wouldn’t have gone to work for DYAD if it weren’t for you!” Zoe screamed. “He went there because of you, because he thought he owed you something, and  _ you let him.  _ And then he… I don’t even know. Lost his mind clearly, fucking disconnected from reality or something because he suddenly thought he was mister science, and he went and got all wrapped up in this shit -”

“Zoe shut up-”

“And he traded Gus’s life for yours,” Zoe went on, louder, “And got mom and dad killed, so I dunno, seems a hell of a lot like you getting involved took him away from me.”

“Do you ever fucking stop talking? Who the fuck taught you to talk to people like that?”   


“YOU ASSHOLE! YOU DID.”

The car fell silent, save for the quiet, tinny noise of Christmas carols playing on the radio at a low volume. 

It took forever to get back to Boston. 

Zoe didn’t really realize at first that they weren’t on their way back to her place. 

“Where are you taking me?”   


“Somewhere where you can’t kill yourself and I won’t be tempted to kill you either.”

Zoe rolled her eyes. 

“This was so fucked up, Zoe. So fucked up. You have no idea what you’ve done, Evan’s in such a fragile place and if you actually cared about him you would have never said that shit to him.”

“Oh well if _Evan's_ fragile," she scoffed. "Who said I care about Evan anymore? I used to. I used to care about you too, because I’m apparently a fucking idiot-”

“God will you shut the fuck up already?”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what you want. If I shut up then you don’t have to think about how much you’ve fucked up when it comes to me.”

“We’re not even talking about that-”

“Faking your death, lying, taking back a scumbag murderer. And that’s just the last four years Connor!”

“Goddamnit Zoe will you just let me drive-”

“You and Evan have been laughing it up I’m sure. Right? Look how pathetic Zoe is, she bought that I was dead. She doesn’t know about clones. She’s so stupid,” She spat. “How many phone calls did you eavesdrop on between us? How much of my privacy did you invade, huh? Because oh _you missed me_? That’s what you said, right? How much you missed me and regretted fucking up my life? Even though you're the one who left?”

“Zo, please-”

“And yet here you are. Fucking it up more. And this time you’ve got a partner in crime, just in case you don’t twist the knife in deep enough-”

“SHUT UP.”

“NO! YOU’RE THE ONE WHO FUCKED THIS UP.”

“SHUT-”

“YOU FUCKED UP AND FUCKED UP AND FUCKED UP AND I AM SO GODDAMN TIRED OF EVERYONE TAKING YOUR SIDE!” Zoe spat, punctuating each word by punching his arm. “You’re an asshole and a liar and a terrible person -”

He shoved her away so forcefully that Zoe’s head cracked against the window loudly. She sat there for a second, stunned. It had been a long, long time since he actually hurt her back.

Connor took a loud breath. “Shit, are you okay-?”

Zoe laughed. 

That was fucking familiar. 

“Everyone acts like you’re so broken and wounded and need all of this help but none of them know that’s not even  _ you _ . You’re so happy to play helpless around the other clones that they don’t know about what you’re really like. You’re a fucking heartless monster, Connor. That’s why you faked your own death. There’s no altruistic explanation for breaking mom’s heart, breaking mine like you did and all you’ve done since coming back is do it again and again and-”

“Shut up.”

He sounded so defeated. 

Good.

Connor parked her car and Zoe knew where she was. “Fuck,” she mumbled. “I left my present for Sofia at my apartment.”

Gus was waiting outside with Pampushka, frowning. Connor climbed out, circling the car and pulling Zoe out roughly by the arm. 

“ _ Connor _ .” Gus sounded scandalized. “Evan called, said Zoe was coming... What happened, are you-?”

“You have to deal with her,” Connor said, roughly pushing Zoe toward Gus. “I can’t… I’m done. I’m fucking done. You deal with her. She’ll only talk to you anyway.”

“Connor, I am not-”

“She’s fucking drunk!” Connor shouted. He looked close to tears. He gave Gus Zoe’s keys. “She showed up at my parents’ graves drunk. She drove there and then she told Evan he ought to be dead, so I… I have to go deal with that. I’m sorry, I just. I  _ can’t _ .”

Zoe watched him rush off to where Evan had parked down the block. “FUCK YOU!” She shouted after him, and Evan drove off. 


	6. A Debt I Gotta Settle in Heaven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fallout.

“Zoe.”

“I really don’t… want to hear it,” Zoe said, rubbing her temples. 

“Let’s go inside.”

Zoe followed Gus into his apartment. 

“Have you eaten?” He asked her when they got inside. 

“No.”

“Need some water?”

“Sure.”

Gus gave her a glass of water. “What do you want to eat?”

“I’m not really hungry.”

“Will you eat waffles if I make them?”

Zoe nodded miserably. Her head was starting to hurt. She didn’t quite feel real. Gus busied himself making food. Pampushka stayed by Gus’s side, not coming near Zoe. 

Great. 

A dog was pissed at her. 

Gus put a plate of waffles in front of Zoe, and she forced herself to eat them and drink a whole glass of water. 

“Your hand is bleeding.”

Zoe looked at it again. She was still holding the bloody napkin in her hand. Gus went into the bathroom and returned with a first aid kit. He cleaned her hand with an antiseptic wipe and put bandages on the two cuts that were deepest. 

The whole thing was putting her on edge. 

He was so quiet and Pampushka wouldn’t leave his side. 

“Will you just yell at me and get it over with?” Zoe said.

“You said you don’t want to hear it.”

“Well anything would be better than this.” Zoe pulled her hand back, waiting. Gus still didn’t yell. He picked up the first aid kit and left the room. 

She followed him. “Just fucking yell at me. Seriously, I can take it.”

Gus folded his arms across his chest, but said nothing for a long moment. “When is the last time you slept?”

“Who cares? Why does that matter?”

“When?”

Zoe sighed. “I slept a couple of hours yesterday.”

Gus frowned. “Go sleep. I cannot talk to you when you are like this.”

“Like what? Angry?”

“No,” Gus said softly. “When you are drunk. I will not speak to you like this. Go sleep. We will talk later.”

* * *

Despite her protests, Zoe fell asleep pretty quickly after being sent to Gus’s room.

When she woke up, Zoe felt like shit. 

Fuck. Fuck. 

It all came back in slow motion, and each memory made Zoe feel sicker and sicker. 

Shit. 

Shit. 

Shit. 

She drove all the way home drunk and sleep deprived. She’d screamed at Connor, hit him. Screamed at Evan. 

She felt like the guilt sitting in the pit of her stomach was going to open up and swallow her whole. Fuck fuck. 

She might hate them but she kept her distance for a fucking reason. She didn’t…

Fuck. 

Gus. 

What had she said to Gus?

Zoe stumbled out of his bed, surprised to see it was dark in the living room, the only light coming from the kitchen. Gus was sitting at the table with a coffee cup in front of him, patting Pampushka’s head. He looked… Fucking wrecked. 

Shit.

“Hey…” Zoe said awkwardly. “I’m… sorry about earlier, I can get out of here-”

“Sit down please.”

His voice was so quiet that it was a miracle she even heard him. Zoe sat on command, across the table. “It’s okay if… if you want to yell at me. I screwed up. I’m sorry.”

“I do not want to yell.”

Zoe swallowed audibly. Her head was pounding. 

“I am very angry with you Zoe.”

“I… I know.”

“I trusted you to be safe when you returned home. And you were not.” His voice was low, quiet, and almost menacing. It sounded like he was exercising a lot of restraint to speak to her in a civil way. She wished he would just yell. 

“I’m sorry…”

“And then you drive after drinking.”

Zoe looked down at her lap, her eyes burning. 

“You hurt yourself. I do not like this, but I understand. You hurt people who have hurt you. Connor, and Evan. This I also understand. I do not like this, but I understand.” He took a deep breath. “But if you drive drunk, you can hurt the innocent. This is unacceptable.”

She nodded. “I messed up.”

“You do not do this. It is not right.”

"Nothing happened,” Zoe mumbled, crying now. “I know I fucked up, but I didn't hurt anyone.”

Gus frowned deeper. “You did hurt people. Your words hurt Evan and Connor. I am very angry about this.”

“I meant…”

“I know what you mean,” Gus said shortly. His voice shook a little.  “You did not hurt by driving drunk. But you did not think. You did not care that you could have. The innocent must not suffer for your pain, Zoe.”

She started crying in earnest then. “You’re… you’re right, I’m so sorry, fuck. I… I should go, I should-”

“Zoe. I am not finished.”

She snapped her mouth shut and stared harder down at her lap, the image of her jeans swimming before her eyes. She was so stupid she was an idiot she had to leave had to go go go go...

“You do not understand how dangerous what you have done can be. It is careless and stupid to do this. You are not a careless, stupid person. Why make this decision?”

She shrugged pitifully because “I felt sad” was a pathetic excuse and she knew it. “I don’t… I’m sorry.”

“Sorry does very little if you had hurt someone. If you had killed someone.”

Zoe nodded, unable to look at him, meet his eyes. 

“I know you are angry, and this makes it hard to see outside of yourself. But you cannot let this anger control you. It is dangerous.”

“I know.”

“No, you do not know,” Gus said sounding… almost impatient. Unusual. “You have not seen what harm anger can do when it is in control. You do not have to be so careful to protect others around you from it. But you will if you do not learn. You will hurt someone and you will have to live with this guilt. I know this. I’ve done this. I’ve hurt and killed out of anger and it does not fade.”

Zoe felt so ashamed. Just utterly ashamed of herself. She was hurting people, she was trash, she was garbage she was treating the world the way she accused Connor of treating her. What fucking right did she have to act this way? She’d had one awful thing happen to her, and she’d started to take it out on the world. She was a fuck up, a disaster. Zoe hiccuped out a sob. “I need, I have to go I’m so sorry-”

She stood, but so did Gus. “If I let you leave now, I do not think you will be safe.”

Zoe shrugged. “I mean…. You’re angry and I f-fucked up so I just… I gotta go.”

“You being safe is more important than anger, always.”

“I can’t, I’ve got to go I’ve got to-”

“Mateo Perez was thirteen years old. He liked playing guitar. His mother loved him. They lived in Spain, in a house with a blue door. I killed him. I stabbed him in the heart and watched him die.”

Zoe stopped in the doorway. It was like all of the air was knocked out of her.

“He was a child. Innocent. I killed him. I must live with his blood on my hands. With the guilt.”

Zoe stared. She knew, distantly, that Gus had been brought up to kill people, to kill clones but… She didn’t really. She never asked. She didn’t want to know. 

But she had to. 

“How many… how many of them died?”

“Seventeen,” Gus answered. His voice was far away.  “Tiajo Villareal was after Mateo. Also in Spain, also thirteen. Him I shot. It was quick… I made it quick.” Gus bowed his head then. Pampushka whined from the floor, standing up and nudging him. “Then Angus Clark, he was fourteen, in Scotland. He played fullback on a soccer team. Alexis Lajeunesse in France, Marcello Zito in Italy, and Thadeus Condos in Greece, also when they are fourteen. Children. All children.”

Zoe stood still, listening raptly, in horror, as Gus listed off  _ six _ fifteen year olds. His voice shook, but he kept on, unrelenting. “Gabrjel Zielinski in Poland at sixteen.  Hans Sippel in Germany, also sixteen. I strangled him… He smiled when he saw me at first. As if I was a friend. Novák Bodor in Hungary… He had two sisters, younger, and they found his body.” Gus took a shuddering breath. “Andrij Vadymovych Kalinichenko in Ukraine when we are both seventeen. He begs me for his life, asks for his mother…”

Zoe swallowed, realizing there was one he hadn’t mentioned. He’d given her sixteen.   


“The last one was Guillaume Belier. He was French, but I killed him in New York. He would have been eighteen in a few months.” Gus shook his head. “He died in front of Connor, and dad. They both watched me kill him.”

“I’m so sorry…”

“I do not ever forget their names. Their faces. All seventeen, all innocent people. It does not leave me.” He looked at Zoe sadly. “I do not want this for you. I do not want you to have the guilt or shame I have.”

“I’m so… I’m so fucking sorry,” Zoe sobbed, and Gus led her out of the doorway before her legs could get out. “I’m an asshole… you have… You’ve gone through so much and you’re such a good person and I’m just… I’m ruining everything. I’m so fucking selfish and stupid and…”

“No. You do not talk this way. I tell you this with love because it takes me a very long time to learn to forgive myself. I still struggle. With the anger. I still must be careful, must fight.”

“What do you mean?”

Gus looked at her with the saddest eyes she had ever seen. “When Evan helps me escape DYAD-”

She flinched, but Gus pressed on. 

“-He was shot by a doctor. She had done tests, taken parts of me to see when they would grow back… She tested Connor as well. She thought we might… we might be the cure.” He shook his head. “She shot at me, but Evan took the bullet…” He blinked a few times. “Stupid of him.”

“No shit,” Zoe remarked. 

“I killed this doctor,” Gus said, his voice soft. “I was angry. She hurt him. She’d hurt me, and Connor and…” He stopped. Cleared his throat.  “I do not want this life for you Zoe. I do not want your anger to have this control over you. But only you can stop yourself having a life like this.”

That set her off again. Just when she thought she couldn’t cry anymore or any harder, she did. Gus hugged her close to his chest. 

“I just miss them so fucking much,” Zoe said, her voice rough. “It’s not fair… it’s not fair that they died for someone else’s mistakes.”

Gus petted her hair. 

“It should have been me,” She cried. “Why them? They didn’t deserve this, they…”

“Do not say this. You are here, this is a blessing.”

“My mom… she and I, we were… we were finally starting to actually t-talk. About what we thought happened to Connor, about… about my stuff. She was coming around on Hannah, she said… she said it was cool that Hannah was going into STEM.”

“That is a good thing. To care about the person who you love.”

“Well I went and fucked that up too,” Zoe said, “I’m still in love with her, but I ruined everything.”

“There is still time to make things right,” Gus said softly. “Much time.”

“I’m so fucking sorry,” Zoe said quietly, a while later, when she had stopped crying. “You shouldn’t have to clean up my messes… or take care of me.”

“I know this. But I will do it if you need.”

“Thank you… for telling me. About what happened to you,” She said, putting her hand on top of Gus’s. “That… must have been so horrible. I don’t know how… how you do it. You’re amazing.”

Gus gave her a smile.

* * *

 

Heidi sat across the table from Connor, frowning. 

“I shouldn’t have brought him there…” he said, staring into a mug of tea that Seamus had put in front of him. “I should have just gone on my own…”

“This wasn’t your fault,” Heidi said softly. She frowned deeply, and Seamus came to stand behind her, a warm hand on her shoulder. “You couldn’t have known…”

“No but… I did tell her I wouldn’t bring Evan there. That was stupid of me.”

“You can’t beat yourself up like this, son.”

Connor put his head down on the table. 

Heidi patted his hand, getting up from her chair. “I’m going to check on Evan,” she announced. 

Connor had driven them here after they dropped Zoe off with Gus. They had tried to go to Evan’s place first, but Connor was worried about him and brought him to Heidi. Which she appreciated. For a while, she was a little uneasy about Evan and Connor getting back together. Evan had been so fragile after DYAD blew up, and the idea of letting him anywhere near the boy who told him he never wanted to see Evan again had made Heidi’s skin crawl. 

But she knew that Connor was a good person. He was. And he loved Evan. Heidi had learned to forgive him for what he said to Evan out of fear and anger. If anyone had tried to pull the sort of stunt Evan had on Heidi, she might have killed them. Genuinely killed them. 

She knocked softly on the guest room door, and Evan quietly said “hello.”

“Hi baby,” Heidi said, stepping into the room. Evan laid on top of the covers, eyes closed. 

Heidi knew when her son had been crying. She went and took a seat at the edge of the bed. “Evan, honey, how are you feeling?”

He frowned. “Not great.”

“What can I do?” 

He looked away. “Nothing, I don’t think.” 

“Sweetheart… I don’t think Zoe meant what she said. She’s upset.”

Evan rolled over. “She’s right.”

“She isn’t,” Heidi said firmly. “She’s hurting, and she said things she doesn’t mean.” 

Evan said nothing. 

Heidi sighed. She reached out, and ran a hand over his hair, and said she would come back and check on him later. 

 

The thing was, Heidi understood Zoe’s anger. She herself had been exceptionally angry with Evan after everything with DYAD. But she was angry he had been careless with his life; she hadn’t really touched the ways in which he had been careless with the lives of other people. 

Heidi had been friendly with the Murphys, she’d gone to coffee and sometimes dinner with them, she’d been at Zoe’s high school graduation…

A few weeks after Zoe moved back into her parents’ house, Heidi went over to the house, armed with a pot of chili (something she had fed Zoe in the past and knew she liked). She knew Zoe wasn’t doing well, she knew Zoe was very angry at Connor and Evan for getting back together. She knew all of this. 

She sort of just thought that all Zoe needed was a little bit of attention. Someone to listen to her be angry and sad. 

So Heidi went to visit Zoe.

Zoe answered the door looking pale and exhausted. 

“Hey sweetie,” Heidi said. “I brought you some food. Can I come in?”

Zoe wordlessly pulled the door open and let Heidi inside. Heidi made her way into the kitchen, setting the pot on the stove. “Have you eaten? Can I warm this up for you?” Heidi asked. 

“I just had lunch.”

“We can put it away for now then.” Heidi placed the container in the fridge. “How are you doing, sweetheart?”

Zoe blinked a few times. “Fine, I guess.”

“Do you want to sit? Can I make you some tea or something?”

Zoe frowned. “I can make my own tea, thanks.”

Heidi felt a bit… useless now that she was standing in the kitchen of the Murphy household which was only occupied by one Murphy. “Honey, you know you can talk to me, right?”

Zoe took a seat at the table. “I know. Thanks.”

Heidi sat across from her. “Is there anything I can do, honey?” 

Zoe shrugged. “I’m alright. Thanks.”

Heidi frowned. “You’re not alright, honey. I know you’re not. And that’s okay. It’s okay to not be okay, Zoe.”

Zoe sniffed, and Heidi sprang to her feet and wrapped Zoe in a tight hug. She petted Zoe’s hair, and Zoe leaned against her a little. 

Heidi always liked Zoe. She always liked her. She’d been a bit horrified at the circumstances of her friendship with Evan at first. She knew Evan had a crush on a girl named Zoe Murphy for ages, and suddenly that same girl was coming to her house and sitting beside Evan on the sofa, sometimes shoving handfuls of M&Ms into her mouth. At first Heidi had been a bit worried... But she was mostly just glad they had each other. 

“Sweetheart,” Heidi said gently. “Tell me what you need.”

Zoe pulled away, wiping her face. “I always wished my mom was more like you. In high school and stuff… I wished she was more like you. I thought you were… magic. A super mom. You worked so hard, but Evan… Evan was always the priority. And even when he got upset that you weren’t around as much, and acted jealous because my parents, like… ate dinner together most nights? I always knew he was wrong. I knew you cared more. You were doing the work of two parents, and you were doing a better job than mine.”

“Oh honey…”

“But now I just want my parents back. Inattentive, distracted, more focused on Connor… I don’t care. I don’t care about any of that. I just want them back, Heidi.”

Heidi teared up. “I know sweetheart.”

“It’s not fair that I have no parents and Evan still has you,” Zoe said, shaking her head. “It’s not fair that he… He gets everything. He gets you, and he gets Connor and… I’m. I’m all alone and I don’t have any parents.. I don’t have anyone.”

“Honey, I’m-”

“I know he’s your kid,” Zoe said, softly. “I know Evan is your baby and you love him and you have to love him. But god… He really hurt me, and I don’t think I can ever get over that.”

Heidi was definitely crying now. “Zoe, honey, it’s not fair that this happened to you…”

“It’s not,” Zoe said. She wiped her eyes. “It’s not fair at all. But I think you should go now.”

“Zoe, I’m worried about you. I really don’t think you should be alone.”

“Thanks,” Zoe said. “But I don’t think you get to be worried about me anymore.” She sighed. “You know the way out.”

 

Heidi walked back to the kitchen, and Seamus and Connor looked up at her. “How is he?” Connor asked, sounding a bit desperate. 

“He’s not good,” Heidi said. Connor got to his feet immediately, heading toward the guest room. 

Heidi sank into a seat at the table. “Do you think… did we screw up with Zoe? Should we have done more to help her?”

Seamus took her hand. “She wanted space.”

“And look where it got her,” Heidi said. “She’s driving drunk and hurting everyone she runs across. She was in the hospital a few months ago...”

Seamus nodded. Squeezing her hand. “You can’t beat yourself up about this, love. You’re not responsible for her.”

Heidi nodded, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was, at least a little responsible for Zoe. “I just think maybe… maybe I could have done more. Tried harder.”

* * *

Zoe ended up sleeping on the sofa.

She woke up at dawn, screaming because she could feel sticky blood on her hands, she could feel her mom’s pulse flickering out under her fingers, she could hear her father screaming and sobbing and realizing that that was the last time she ever saw him. 

“Zoe, it’s okay.”

“No,” she yelped, slapping away hands that were trying to touch her. “MOM. Mom. Mom. You’re not dying, you’re not, you’re NOT YOU’RE NOT-”

“Zoe try to breathe.”

A light switched on. Gus was standing in his pajamas, by the lamp, his face stricken. 

Zoe’s heart was still hammering too fast, her breathing was too fast, and Gus was standing there and then he was beside her, taking her hand and she didn’t deserve that she didn’t she’d been horrible horrible horrible.

“I’m… I’m going to…” 

Zoe stood up on shaky legs, rushing to the bathroom where she threw up in the toilet. 

She got up. Flushed the toilet. Rinsed her mouth out with water. 

And turned to look at Gus, who looked pale and scared. “Are you okay?”

“No,” Zoe said. “You know what… I’m not. I’m not okay.”

He nodded. “What can I do?”

“I’ve been… I’ve imposed on you so much,” Zoe said. “I don’t know how…to thank you. To apologize for everything...”

Gus pulled her into a tight hug, and Zoe let him. 

Zoe laughed sort of pathetically a few minutes later. “I bet you really regret giving me your number now.”

“No. Never.”

Zoe sucked in a deep breath. The two of them sat on the sofa. 

“What happens now?” Gus asked her. 

Zoe took a shuddering breath. “I… I need to get my shit together. I’m going to call Dr. Green first thing, after the holiday.”

“That is a very good idea.”

“I should… go back to my place.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

Zoe shrugged. “I’ve beyond overstayed my welcome.”

Gus shook his head. “No.”

“Still, I… I need to. I need to get my shit together.”

Gus smiled. “I would like to help… with the getting the shit together.”

Zoe took his head. “I’d like that.”

* * *

Gus insisted that Zoe still come back for dinner. Which was more than she deserved. She knew that she’d been utterly horrible, but Gus insisted she come back for dinner. 

He went over to Seamus and Heidi’s place for breakfast, and Zoe went back to her apartment. She wrapped up Sofia’s present (a set of American Girl Doll outfits, and several children’s books in both English and Ukrainian). 

She had small gifts for Sveta and Gus as well. Both of them were insistent that she not get them anything, but she got them each a spider web Christmas ornament. Custom ordered. It was little. It wasn’t enough. She wanted to do more. 

But she knew they wouldn’t let her. 

So she did something small. 

She went back home. Washed her hair, changed her clothes. She put on a sweater her mom had gotten her for her last birthday. It was soft and nice. 

It helped her to feel slightly better. 

She still felt like garbage. 

But somehow she felt… lighter. Like the build up of all of her shitty awful feelings had finally exploded out all over everyone…

But it was better.

Than it was. 

Somehow it was better.

* * *

 

Gus and Sveta were really good cooks, Zoe discovered. The two of them put together were fucking adorable too, chatting and laughing while they cooked, Pampushka curled up in the kitchen watching.

Zoe and Sofia were playing with her dolls on the floor. The story Sofia was concocting cracked Zoe up. Her doll (which Sofia called “Ashley” and Zoe found adorable) was in love… with a teddy bear. 

“Oh Teddy,” Sofia said. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too, Ashley,” Zoe responded. 

“Let’s run away together!” “Ashley” said. 

“Where could we run?” Zoe asked, doing her best growly bear voice. 

“The kitchen!”

Zoe and Sofia crawled to the kitchen, where Gus was pulling something out of the oven and Sveta was mixing something in a bowl. She shooed them out of the kitchen, saying the oven was hot, and Gus smiled at Sofia and (after looking at Sveta quickly) that Sofia was allowed to have a cookie before dinner. 

Sofia and Zoe returned to the living room. Zoe looked at Sofia and said, quietly, “Does your mama like Gus?”

Sofia nodded. “Very much.”

Zoe checked to make sure they were not listening in, then said, “Sofia, are… are Gus and your mom dating?”

Sofia wrinkled her nose. “No!” She said, giggling. “Mama says Gus is not her type.”

Zoe was kind of offended on Gus’s behalf. “What does that mean?”  
Sofia looked at Zoe like she was a bit stupid. “Gus likes Joe! Rory’s dad? He liked Joe. He talks to mama about Joe often, saying he has a good smile.”

“Oh.” Zoe felt her face flood with color. “Gus is… he’s gay?”

Sofia blinked at her a few times then said, “Duh.”

Zoe sort of laughed. “I guess I missed that.” 

But then Zoe was struck with a sudden, biting pain. 

Because she wanted to tell Evan.

She wanted to tell him, because he always thought it was funny that she never knew when someone was queer. He always said her “BiFi” was on the fritz. 

And in the second all she wanted was the familiarity of texting her best friend and saying, “Holy shit Evan, why did nobody tell me Gus was gay? I’ve been trying to hook him up with Sveta for months!”

She wanted the comfort of Evan texting her back something silly like “WHAT” or “HOW” in all caps, and then her sending him a picture of her exasperated face. 

“Give me a second Sofia,” Zoe said. She excused herself to the bathroom, where she wiped her eyes a few times and took a couple of deep breaths. 

She hated missing him. She hated him, she hated him so much. 

But she was so tired of hating him. Of working so hard to shut down that part of her so it didn’t destroy her. 

Zoe took a breath. And put a smile back on her face. She went back too playing with Sofia on the floor, and then they all sat down to dinner. 

It was… it was nice. It was great. 

After dinner ended, Sofia and Zoe had some sparkling grape juice while Gus and Sveta each had a glass of wine. They all crowded on the sofa together, Pampushka at Gus’s feet, watching Frosty the Snowman. 

“Are you feeling better Zoe?” Sveta asked maybe twenty minutes into the movie. Sofia was dozing on Gus’s shoulder.

She nodded. “Yes. Thanks for asking.”

“Holidays… are hard for me too,” Sveta said, giving her a sad smile. “I am glad you are feeling better.”

“Thanks.”

She looked over at Gus and then, looking serious at Zoe, “Please do not scare us like this again.”

Zoe nodded pitifully. “I won’t. I was an idiot. That wasn’t okay.”

“It wasn’t,” Gus said, “But we trust you will do better in the future.”

Zoe nodded.

* * *

 

When Gus woke up the morning after Christmas, he was surprised to find his kitchen had been tidied. Pampushka had been fed. Coffee was made. 

There was toast burning. 

“Shit,” Zoe said, frowning and dropping the burned piece into the bin. She gave him a funny smile, twisted, not quite happy. “I’m an awful cook, by the way. Hannah used to like power through some of my attempts, which I appreciated it. She must have had an iron stomach though because… I can’t cook.”

Gus nodded. 

“I wanted to… say thank you. For letting me stay with you, and… talking some sense into me.”

“Of course. We are family.”

Zoe gave him a funny smile again. 

He knew her spirit still suffered greatly. Many of his prayers these days were for Zoe and healing of her heart. She was a good person, Gus knew this in his heart, in his bones. She was sorry for the hurts she had caused, but still lost in the hurts she carried. 

He was grateful that she let him be there. It was a great honor to share in someone else’s pain. 

Zoe’s second attempt at toast was better, and Gus ate his happily. With much jam. Zoe sat across from him, and he knew she was nervous. It rolled off her in waves. 

“What are you going to ask me?” 

She blinked, surprised. “I.. um.” She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, running her hand over the spot twice as if to make sure she got all of the hair. Sometimes Connor did this too. An unconscious trait. He wondered if they knew they both did that. “I was wondering if you’d… let me help you out at work again?”

Gus found he was surprised but delighted by her question. “You really would like this?”

Zoe nodded. “I… I felt a lot better, when I was working with you. When I felt like I was… doing something. When I had a focus.” She picked at a loose thread on her shirt. “Plus dogs are… the best? I always wanted a dog, growing up. Mom and dad wouldn't let us have one.”

“Me too,” Gus said. “Since I am small.” Pampushka let out a happy bark, and Zoe stooped to pet her. Pampushka rolled over, showing her belly to Zoe, who rubbed it enthusiastically. 

“And you got the best dog in the world,” She said in a silly voice. Zoe had the funniest voice when talking to the dogs; it made Gus smile. 

“Yes. She is best girl.”

“So you’ll have me back at work?”

“Yes. This is a good plan. I have one condition, however.”

Zoe looked up at him, eyes fearful. 

“You must promise to go back and have therapy. I worry about you. It will help, I think.”

Zoe nodded. “I set another appointment before you woke up.”

Gus smiled. “Good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extra thanks to Rose for naming the 17 clones who died.


	7. So Come On Motherfucker You Survive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zoe is impatient (eggplant emoji).

Zoe spent the afternoon of New Years Eve hanging out with Sofia. Sveta got asked to fill in for people who had taken holiday time off, and Zoe volunteered to keep an eye on her. She was going to be working part time with Gus, but he had mostly shut down operation for the week following Christmas. Zoe still felt bad that she had ruined his plans for the day, so she offered to watch Sofia when Gus immediately offered. “You should to hang out with Seamus and Heidi. I can hang out with Sofia for an afternoon.”

So she did. They colored for a while in Zoe’s living room, because Sofia thought it looked sad without any pictures. 

“Do you live here all by yourself?”

“I do.”

“Mama and I live have a roommate.”

“Sometimes people have roommates.”

“Our roommate is nice.”

“That’s good.”

Zoe hung the drawings Sofia made up on the fridge. “Look how talented you are,” Zoe said. “You’re very good at drawing.”

“Like Gus?”

“Yes.”

“He made mama a picture for Christmas. She hung it up in her room. She says it is like being back home.”

Zoe smiled. 

“Can I braid your hair?” Sofia asked. “I have been practicing.”

So Zoe propped Sofia up on the sofa and took a seat on the floor. She gave her a hair brush and some hair ties, and just sort of let her go to town. “Your hair smells nice.”

Zoe had showered last at Gus’s house that morning, because she was still sleeping on his couch. His shampoo smelled like cupcakes. Zoe had been amused to discover that morning that his deodorant brand was normally marketed to women. It made her want to text Hannah, who Zoe always teased for using Old Spice shower gel. 

“Thanks,” she said to Sofia. 

“I am going to brush your hair. Is that okay?”

“Yes, thank you.” Zoe thought it was really great that Sveta had obviously taught Sofia a lot about asking before doing things to other people’s bodies. Zoe tried to bring that into her interactions with Sofia was well.

“I like it when mama brushes my hair,” Sofia said. “She is very gentle.”

“That’s good.”

“I would like to have long hair,” Sofia said, and Zoe could picture her smiling as she gathered Zoe’s hair into chunks. “Please let me know if I pull too tight.”

“I will.” 

Zoe couldn’t help but think of being younger and Connor learning to braid her hair, trying to hard to be gentle. It was… super cute in retrospect. To think when he was younger, that kind of thing just… was natural to him. He wanted to play with her hair and be gentle. Before it all got fucked up, he wanted to be nice to her. 

“Tada!” Sofia announced. “Done.”

“Nice job!” Zoe said. “Want to take a picture with my phone so you can show me?”

Sofia said yes, so Zoe handed her phone over. She held still while she heard the camera clicks, and Sofia passed the phone back. Zoe swiped through the pictures, smiling. “This looks great Sofia. Good job.” The braid was awfully loose and a bit lopsided, but Zoe figured that four years didn’t exactly have defined motor skills yet. It was pretty darn good. 

Sveta picked Sofia up about six, and thanked Zoe for watching her. “We had lunch about one,” Zoe said. “Mac and cheese and pizza rolls. But I threw in some peas too.” She wasn’t much of a cook, but two out of three of those items were microwavable. “And carrot sticks for a snack a little bit ago.”

Sveta smiled. “Thank you for the peas and carrots.”

“Have a happy new year, you too.”

“You too!” Sofia said. “Can I have a hug before I leave?”

“Sure thing,” Zoe said. She crouched to her knees and let Sofia initiate a hug. 

Sveta waved at Zoe and took Sofia’s hand, leading her out of the apartment. As Zoe was closing the door, she heard her next door neighbor’s door slam. 

“I need to move,” She muttered to herself.

* * *

 

About an hour later, Zoe arrived at Gus’s apartment with a pizza and a family sized bag of M&MS. “Ready for our pajama party?”

Gus smiled at her. “Yes, very.”

“Thanks again for inviting me over,” Zoe said as she walked inside. 

Gus smiled. “Of course.”

The two of them parked themselves on Gus’s cough, with Pampuska between them. The two of them talked about favorite movies with a client (a human client) a few days before and suddenly that was their plan. Gus’s favorite was Space Jam. He explained having seen it when he was very young and still living in a monastery. 

The two of them watched the movie, alternating popcorn and M&Ms, both reaching down to pet Pampushka absently every few minutes. 

Zoe didn’t exactly understand the movie. She didn’t know who most of the basketball players were (Michael Jordan had retired before she was born), but the cartoons were universally silly, and Zoe liked how much it made Gus laugh. He knew the movie so well sometimes she caught him mouthing the lines, and she realized halfway through that he wasn’t even watching the subtitles. 

After they finished “the Space Jam” as Gus called it, it was time for Zoe’s pick. So naturally they were watching School of Rock.

“I probably watched this a thousand times before I turned ten,” She said as the movie started. “I usually made Connor watch it too. I’m sure he got sick of it after a while, but he never complained. Which was weird for him. He loved to complain.”

“Maybe he wanted to spend the time with you,” Gus said. He gave her a smile. “The first summer after I move in with dad, Connor and I watched the Space Jam many, many times. I know he does not like the movie as much as I do, but he would always watch with me. I think he liked the time together.”

“Yeah.”

Gus seemed to like the movie (although he seemed very distressed about the fact that the kids weren’t learning to practice reading and writing). He liked that the kids called Dewey “Mr. S.,” explaining to Zoe that he called Seamus “S” for a while after he moved in with him. 

“Why’s that?”

“My English was… not very good. I could not say it.”

Gus was extremely indignant when the kids didn’t win Battle of the Bands. “They were clearly more talented!” he said, frowning. “The song was written by a child! Disgraceful!”

“It has a happy ending,” Zoe said, laughing a little. 

“Unfair,” Gus said, but he laughed alongside Zoe. 

After the movies ended, the pair of them turned on coverage of the ball drop in New York. Zoe cracked a few jokes about the presenters and how cold everyone seemed, and Gus looked at her suddenly. “You seem to feel better,” He said. “I ask because I love you… are you really? Or just pretending for me?”

Zoe considered this. She was a good faker. With her last boyfriend she faked a few orgasms. Faked being straight throughout high school. She could pretend if she really wanted or need to do that… but with Gus? 

It seemed stupid to try to lie to your brother. 

He’d just see right through her. 

“I think… I think I’m actually feeling a little bit better.”

“I am so proud of you,” Gus said, which made her get sort of teary. She hadn’t done anything but not gotten drunk or high for a week. “I want you to feel better.”

“Thanks,” Zoe choked out. 

They watched the ball drop on television, and they could hear the muffled sounds of neighbors celebrating around them. “Happy new year, Gus.”

“Happy new year to you too.”

They got up and hugged each other, and Pampushka joined in, letting out a happy bark. 

“Thank you again,” Zoe said. “For everything. I owe you so much.”

“It is what we do for family.”

Zoe smiled. “It is.”

* * *

 

“What would you like to talk about today?”

Zoe chewed her lip. “You know about DYAD stuff right?” It was almost the end of January. Zoe had been itching to ask for a few weeks… but until now she didn’t feel exactly ready. 

Dr. Green nodded. “I know about a lot of the things that happened there, yes. Specifically as they relate my clients.”

“So you know what happened to my dad.”

Dr. Green nodded. “I do.”

Zoe chewed her lip harder. “All I know is he was in on some plan to get Connor out with Evan. I didn’t hear from him again after my mom was killed… and then I found out he died. Seamus… thats Connor’s other dad… He just said it was quick.” She ran a hand through her hair. “That’s… that’s not all that happened right?”

Dr. Green frowned. “I do have a copy of the security tapes from DYAD that night. And a transcript.”

Zoe closed her eyes. “So it’s bad?”

“It’s not pleasant,” Dr. Green said. 

“Can you just… can you tell me what happened? I don’t think I can… watch.”

Dr. Green nodded. He went to his desk, and returned with a tablet. He tapped a few times, then glanced up at Zoe again. “Are you sure you want to know?”

She nodded. “Might as well be here. Probably the safest place.”

Dr. Green nodded. “Alright. So, from what I see in the file… Larry Murphy went to DYAD the night it was burned down and confronted Dominic Morgan. After some words were exchanged, Larry smothered Dominic with a pillow, and was shot in the head by Dominic’s security detail. He died instantly.”

Zoe stared at Dr. Green dully. “He went after Dominic?”

“Yes.”

“Dominic ordered the hit on my mom.” Zoe said slowly. “And dad killed him. Even though he knew DYAD was going down?”

Dr. Green’s face was unchanged. A slight frown, head titled. 

“He went and got revenge… but he didn’t need to,” She said. “He didn’t even call me.” She squeezed her hands into fists. “He went on a stupid revenge mission and got himself killed…” Zoe realized she was shaking, and she shook her head. “We were… we were still alive. Me and Connor. We’re still alive and he fucking threw away his life… How could he do this?”  
“Sometimes, grief can really alter the way people think and act.”

She started to cry. To just totally sob, to break down. 

“Why would he leave us like that?” She choked out. She wiped her face, again and again until the tissue she had been using was nothing more than a sad, wet ball. “Connor knew…”

“There is a note in the file that says Charles Booth showed this video to Connor a few days after DYAD went down.”

Zoe remembered Connor telling her, spitting it at her, seconds after Gus took the fentanyl off of him. 

No wonder.

No wonder he went right for the pills. 

Sitting here now, in January, Zoe understood that impulse totally. 

Because it was exactly what she wanted to do right then and there. 

“What are you thinking about right now?”

Zoe laughed sort of ruefully. “That I would really like to get high.”

Dr. Green nodded. 

“But like… I don’t want to want that.”

“So what is your plan, when you leave here?”

So Zoe ran her plan down. She’d head straight to Gus’s place. She’d text Sveta. She’d practice guitar, which she was trying to do more. She would call Dr. Green if she thought she was in danger. She had a plan. 

She had a plan.

She had a plan. 

It was sort of nice, Zoe thought, to have a plan. 

Zoe drove straight to Gus’s place after therapy. She wasn’t living there full time anymore. Just sometimes, when she thought she was better off not being alone, or when Gus wanted some company. They were good at that, keeping each other company. Gus mentioned this to her recently at work. 

“Is nice, having someone who can talk back during the day.”

“A little tightly packed,” Zoe had giggled. “You ought to expand… like at least physically.”

Gus had rolled his eyes. “Maybe someday.”

To which Zoe had merely rolled her eyes. “You know I am like… super loaded, right? I could write you a check, like. Now.”

Gus’s face went a bit pink. “This is very kind, Zoe, but I do not want your money.”

“I’m not joking.”

“I’m not either.”

Zoe dropped it, considering Gus seemed a bit embarrassed by the whole thing. Maybe he thought you shouldn’t talk money with people. She didn’t know. 

“Hey,” She called when she walked in. Gus had just given her a set of keys. Likewise, she’d given him a set. “I’m coming from therapy and would like to please pet a dog.”

As if on cue, Pampushka came bounding at Zoe, jumping up on her happily so Zoe could stroke her head without stooping. “Where’s Gus, huh?” She said. “Where’s the boss?”

Gus was walking out of the kitchen, waving somewhat absently. “I…” He looked a bit pink in the face. “Today Joe, Rory’s person… asks for my number?”

Zoe looked at Pampushka and softly said, “Nice job.” She looked up at Gus. “Oh did he know? Did you text him?”

“I’m not sure what to say…”

Zoe laughed. “Are kids these days still sending eggplant emojis?”

Gus’s face went even pinker. “I am not doing this. Impatient Murphys.”

Zoe rolled her eyes. Pampushka put all four paws on the floor. “Well don’t wait too long. It’s just a text.”

“This is true,” Gus said. “Do you want food? I am making dinner.”

“Sure,” Zoe said, shrugging. To be totally frank, being around Gus was actually very helpful. He was always reminding her to eat. She forgot, a lot, and for a while a lot of her clothes hung off of her awkwardly. Like a spector of who she had been before. 

But now she didn’t need to tighten her belt quite as tightly. 

“How was therapy?” Gus asked as he set to work at the stove. 

“Not great,” She said. “We talked about my dad.”

Gus turned to look at her. “Oh?”

She shrugged. “So now I like… know what actually happened.”

Gus waited. 

“I’m pissed.”

He nodded. 

“He didn’t… he didn’t have to be there. He didn’t have to go after Dominic, like, at all. He could have stayed alive.”

“Yes. This is true.”

Zoe picked at some of her nail polish, then stopped, not wanting to leave a mess of polish flakes all over Gus’s table. She put her head down. 

Gus tapped it lightly, putting a glass of water in front of her. “What is happening in there?”

Zoe groaned, barely lifting her head.  “If I talk about it, I’ll get all angry and start crying.”

Gus smiled kindly. “So cry. Get angry. It’s safe here.”

Zoe frowned. “Don’t you ever just get… pissed? That you still have to deal with this kind of stuff?”

“It is very frustrating, sometimes, yes.”

“Does it get better?”

She was earnestly asking. And she trusted Gus to tell her the truth. 

“Yes. But it takes… a long time. You have to patient with yourself.”

“Patience is stupid.”

Gus smiled. “You sound like our brother.”

“Ugh, whatever.” She put her head back down. There was too much in it. She didn’t want to sound like Connor, like, ever. It had been something of a driving force for her in the last decade. Don’t be like Connor. Don’t be like him. 

“Why is that?” Dr. Green had asked her a couple of sessions back. “Why try so hard to not be like him?”

“Because… he was awful. He was mean and violent and angry. He was everything you aren’t supposed to be, like, ever.”

“And he’s still like this? With you?”

Zoe stopped. “I mean… sometimes.”

Dr. Green waited for her to go on. 

“Like when… Like Christmas Eve. He shoved me.” She sighed, though. “But only after I’d hit him a few times.”

“I see.” Dr. Green smiled slightly. “Can I challenge you to think about your brother a little, once you leave here? You spent three years apart. You’re different, I’d imagine. Is it possible that maybe he is too?”

Zoe didn’t love that homework assignment.

For her, it was easier if things just… stayed the same. 

If Connor had stayed dead, if things stayed uncomfortable with her mom about Connor’s 

birthday, if her dad was stoic and they barely talked about the important stuff.  

She looked at Gus, feeling the way her face was pinching suddenly. She was going to cry. Her lip started to tremble, her nose felt congested.  “My dad… got himself killed.”

Gus shut the stove off, moving the pan he was cooking in off of the burner. He sat across from her. 

“He got himself killed, right? He went to DYAD to kill Dominic and it got him killed.”   


Gus nodded. 

“So that… that wasn’t Evan’s fault, was it?”

Gus patted her hand sympathetically. “I do not think Evan knew his plan.”

“Fuck,” Zoe said, the word coming out as a strangled gasp. “I blamed him… For months.” She covered her face. “Fuck. I wish I didn’t know.”

“It is difficult, sometimes, to know the whole story. To understand truth.”

“Damn it… I’ve been fucking…” She shook her head. “Is there anything I don’t know about the swap?” She asked suddenly. 

Gus frowned, looking a bit pale. “I do not think so.”

“So Evan and dad worked that out together, right?”

“This is what I am told, yes.”

“So he still.... So the two of them pissed Dominic off, then. Together. Both of them?” She shook her head. “He still got my mom killed.”

“He did not mean this to happen,” Gus said gently. “He was wanting to save Connor. As was I. Did I get her killed too?”

“It’s not the same.”

“I agreed to go with him. I agreed to the trade.”

“No, it’s… It’s not the same. That was manipulative and shitty, and… it’s different.”

Gus seemed to know now wasn’t the time to push. He patted Zoe’s hand. “I think eating is a good idea, now.”

“Okay.”

“Do you want to stay over?”

“Yes please.”

Gus made a stir fry for dinner. Zoe cleaned her plate, despite insisting she wasn’t all that hungry. Gus had a way of getting her talking until she’d look down and find her plate almost empty. 

It was nice of him.

He was just… too damn nice. 

“You know you’re too fucking nice to me right?” She told him this after dinner, when she was washing his dishes (since you can’t burn food if you’re washing it off a plate).

Gus shrugged. “I am a nice person. People tell me this.”

Zoe laughed, and gave him a hug. “Thanks.”

“Of course. You are my family. I love you.”

Zoe ducked her head, a little embarrassed. “Love you too.”

Gus smiled brightly at her, and Pampushka barked, and Zoe smiled back. Genuinely.

* * *

 

In a blur of dog washes and therapy appointments, Zoe found herself staring down the middle of February. 

She might have missed it if not for the red paper hearts that sprung up all over shop windows downtown. 

Growing up, the fact that Connor’s birthday was right after Valentine’s Day made things… awkward. Zoe remembered a lot of fights with their mom because Connor never wanted to bring in treats for class the day after a party. Zoe secretly knew it was because her brother wasn’t especially popular with his peers. He never came home with a lot of Valentines, no matter how much time he spend working on his mailbox. Things were especially bleak after the whole Mrs. G. printer incident. Zoe, not quite seven, stayed up way too late working on her own special Valentine’s Day card for him, which she stuffed into his mailbox in the middle of the night. 

On the walk out of school that day, Connor had squeezed her hand and said “thank you.” He got a few cards, from kids whose parents just made them give one to everybody, but Zoe remembered feeling proud that Connor had liked hers. That she made his day less bad. 

For his birthday that year, they went and had dinner at Connor’s favorite restaurant, and then they went roller skating. They even got their dad to put on skates, Zoe and Connor skating circles around their parents, racing around the rink, laughing when they fell down. At the end of the night, the skating rink announced a couple’s skate, and Zoe and Connor stuck their tongues out at their parents and went to go return their rental skates. 

“His birthdays got… kind of tough after that,” Zoe explained to Dr. Green in one of her sessions the week of February 7th. “And once puberty hit? We barely talked.”

He nodded. “What made you bring this up?”

“Connor’s birthday is Tuesday.”

“I see.”

“I’m… working with his twin brother.”

“You’re trying to decide if you should call him. Right?”   


They hadn’t spoken since Christmas. Zoe finally got what she wanted from him; Connor had finally left her alone. But now…

It wasn’t that she was she was just suddenly… over it. She was still super pissed off at Connor. For lying to her for years, for letting her think he was dead, for time and again picking Evan over her.

But.

Since Christmas… 

There were things she couldn’t unsay. 

There were things she still needed to say. 

“Is that like… a massively stupid idea?” Zoe asked Dr. Green. 

“You know I’d never answer that,” He said, smiling a little. “But let’s talk about what you would want out of a phone call.”

Zoe let out a sigh. “I… it’s been hard, not talking to him. I thought he was gone for so long… knowing he’s alive? And just… not talking. It feel wrong. Even though I’m angry.”

“So you… just want to talk?”

“I know I can’t just… turn back time.” She pulled a hand through her hair. “But. He’s… I’ve so few people left.”

“Is that enough of a reason to reach out?”

Zoe shrugged. “I’m not sure. But it seems like a good enough reason to try. To see if we can… have something.”

Dr. Green smiled. 

* * *

On the morning of February 15th, Zoe arrived with a cupcake in a gift bag and cup of coffee in her hand just in time to see Rory and Joe leaving Gus’s van. She tried to hang back, but Rory had become pretty fond of her over the last few months, and he started whining and pulling his leash toward her. 

Pampushka gave Zoe a look like  _ way to ruin the moment dude.  _

“Hi, good morning,” She said, sorta awkwardly. She patted Rory’s head. 

“Hello Zoe,” Gus said, a little too loudly, his cheeks a bit pink. “Joe and Rory came by to bring me coffee.”

“That’s nice of them,” She said warmly. “Hi Joe.”

“Hi Zoe,” Joe said. His cheeks were also a little pink. “Sorry I didn’t realize you’d be here, or I would have brought coffee for you too.”

Zoe smiled, trying not to giggle. “I’ve got my own. But thank you, that’s very kind.”

“Joe is very kind person,” Gus said, sounding a bit… dazed. Zoe climbed up into the back of the van, checking out the schedule. 

“I’m just gonna confirm tomorrow’s appointments,” Zoe said, kind of loudly, so as to indicate that she was going to give Gus and Joe a little space. She sat down with the calendar, dialing the first number and leaving a message on the machine for the appointment for Ralphie, four year old collie. The notes on his file said that he was a bit nervous around loud noises, which Zoe highlighted for Gus. 

Gus finally returned about ten minutes later, face still pink. 

“Joe and Rory brought you coffee.”

“He knew it was my birthday,” Gus said awkwardly. 

“Sveta told him,” Zoe said breezily. “I’d bet you five bucks.”

“He is just being… friendly.”

Zoe’s eyebrows went up. “You’ve been texting for like a month. One of you is going to have to -” She stopped herself from saying “pull the trigger” because that wasn’t the kindest idiom to go with, so instead she said “-get it together and ask the other out, or I’m going to have to intervene.”

Gus shook his head. “Impatient.”

“I’m gonna steal your phone and start sending eggplant emojis,” Zoe teased. 

“You are not as funny as you wish you were,” Gus said, laughing a little. 

The conversation slowed a little as Gus took their first client of the day (Mitzy, a five year old Shitzu with a hilarious underbite), and Zoe placed a few phone calls to reorder supplies while Pampushka rested her head in Zoe’s lap.  Around noon she realized she had never actually given Gus the damn cupcake. 

“Oh! I totally forgot,” Zoe said. “I know you said no gifts, but food is not a gift. So I got you a cupcake. And by that I mean I  _ bought _ one so you live past twenty two.”

Gus cracked up laughing at that. 

At lunch he insisted that they split the cupcake, and Zoe allowed it because sharing stuff seemed to make Gus happy. The icing was bright blue and cotton candy flavored; Zoe had intentionally picked out the most tooth-rottingly sweet cupcake flavor at the bakery. Gus loved it. He shared a small piece with Pampushka, who also seemed to approve. 

“Any big plans tonight?” She asked him that afternoon. 

“I have dinner with dad today,” He said, smiling. 

“Just you two?”   


Gus nodded. “We have no had as much time, just us, these days. I miss this sometimes, so we are having dinner tonight alone, together.”

“That sounds nice.”

“Connor comes in this weekend and all of us celebrate with Reed. And Sunday, we have family dinner at Heidi’s.”

Zoe nodded. “Sounds fun.”

“You could come too,” Gus said carefully. “On Sunday, for dinner. If you like.”

Zoe nodded. “Thanks, I’ll think about it.”

“Connor would be happy to see you, I think.”

That might be true. But where Connor went, Evan followed, and Zoe wasn’t sure she’d be ready by this weekend to see him. She had doubts she’d be ready in this lifetime. “I’ll let you know, okay? Thank you for inviting me. Honestly.”

Just as Zoe was getting ready to leave for the day, she stopped. 

“Need something?” Gus asked. 

“Could you… give me Connor’s phone number?”

* * *

 

Zoe paced around her kitchen island, having a staring contest with her phone.

The phone was winning. Damn it. Motherfucker never blinked. 

She stared and stared and waited for the clock to hit 8:08 exactly before she picked up her phone and selected the newly entered contact for Connor Murphy. 

It rang three times. 

She started to panic, because she hadn’t prepared for a voicemail. 

“Hello?” Connor’s voice.

Zoe almost choked, almost dropped the phone and hung up. “Hey. It’s… it’s Zoe.”

“Zoe. Hi.” He sounded surprised. “Are you… is everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine… I was just calling to wish you a happy birthday.”

“Oh.”

“So… happy birthday.”

“Thanks.” He cleared his throat. “How’ve you been?”

She was surprised he would ask. “Better. Not, like, great… but better.”

“You still pursuing a career as an assistant dog groomer?”

“I actually really like it. So yeah.”

“That’s… great.”

A pause hit the line. 

“About Christmas... “

“About Christmas…”

Zoe laughed. It had been a long time since they had done something like that. Talked at the same time, over each other. 

“You first,” Connor said. 

“I’m sorry,” Zoe said. “What happened… I fucked up. I shouldn’t have said a lot of what I said, and I’m sorry.” She sucked in a deep breath. “Now you go.”

“I… shouldn’t have brought Evan there,” he said. “What you said wasn’t great, but you’re right. I told you I’d keep him away, and I fucked up.”

“It was fucked up, what I said.” She sighed. “But I…”

“I know.” He sighed. “I’ve been trying to… back off a bit.”

“I appreciate it.”

Another silence. “Well I should-” Zoe started.

“Do you remember the Valentine’s Day card you made me when I was in second grade? You put it in my mailbox so I wouldn’t be the only kid who had nothing to open.”

“Yeah,” Zoe said. “I remember.”

“I should have saved that. Held onto it, somewhere.”

“It was just a silly card.”

“Not to me.”

Zoe smiled a little. “Happy birthday, Connor.”

“Thanks, Zo.”

They both hung up. 


	8. Trying to Get Myself Back Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the anniversary of Zoe's mom's death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies that this chapter took forever, my new job is surprisingly exhausting. :) Now for the thrilling conclusion.

Hannah and Reed finished giving their presentation to a room full of biology students at University of Chicago when the moderator opened the floor up for questions. 

Hannah anxiously wrung her hands. Reed bumped her shoulder with theirs, and Hannah gave them a slight smile. She wished Evan had been available for this talk, but Evan wasn’t doing especially well as the one year anniversary of DYAD being blown up approached. He said he needed to keep away from the prying questions that usually came with these presentations. Hannah understood. It was hard enough for her. 

“Have either of you ever met one of the subjects of Project Phanes?” One of the people in the audience asked. 

Reed smirked at Hannah. “We’ve met,” They said. 

“Do you feel as the controversy surrounding the DYAD Institute has negatively impacted your ability to further your research?”

Hannah shook her head. “Not especially. If anything, it brought more attention to the research. We’ve been able to secure funding to help widely spread the cure for subjects worldwide.”

They answered a few more questions, and then the moderator closed down the talk. There was a lot of applause and then Reed and Hannah walked out of the room, into the corridor outside of the lecture hall where the talk was held. 

“I know it should be a big huge honor to be asked to give a talk like this…” Hannah started. 

“But feels weird without Evan, right?”

“He’s so much better with crowds.”

“So much better.”

“Did Connor tell you he’d been dodging the recruiters?”

Reed nodded. “I guess they had a big fight about it. Evan keeps insisting he just wants to work with ERAS, but…” They shrugged. “It doesn’t seem fair, us taking all the credit.”

“Agreed. Maybe we should have an intervention,” Hannah said. “Wave that sweet sweet grant money under his nose.”

“Show him pictures of the labs at Harvard.”

They smiled at each other. 

“So, what’s the plan? How should we spend our free evening in the Windy City?”

“Oh so this time you’re not going back to your room to have Skype sex with Chiv?” 

“He missed me!” Reed laughed. 

Hannah shook her head. “We were gone for  _ a day. _ ”

“Let’s get something to eat,” Reed said, pointedly ignoring Hannah. “I’m starving.” They found a vegan place not too far from the university, and Hannah was grateful to be eating finally because speaking engagements made her nervous which made her lose her appetite. 

“So, you still talking to Shira?” Reed asked. 

Hannah shook her head. “She’s a really nice person, but she’s… Like. I just can’t handle that right now. The whole relationship thing. Every time we went out I’d half expect her to leave me with the check and never call me again.”

“That’s intense. I’m sorry.”

Hannah shrugged. “Sorry to get all sad lesbian at dinner.”

“You’re my favorite sad lesbian dinner date.”

Hannah rolled her eyes, knowing full well that she was Reed’s  _ only  _ sad lesbian dinner date. “It’s just… it’s been almost a year, but I just keep hoping…” She shrugged. “Whatever. Nevermind. No more sad Zoe talk.”

“How would you feel about happy Zoe talk?” Reed said carefully, taking a sip of their water. “Because I… have some.”

Hannah carefully chewed a bite of her food. “Is it okay if I say no? It’s nice to know that there is some good news coming from her direction, but… I dunno. Sometimes it just sort of sucks me back in.”

“Fair enough.”

Reed insisted the pair of them go out for overpriced martinis after dinner, and Hannah let them talk her into her. She needed to… loosen up a little. She was so tightly wound that her shoulders were literally starting to hurt sometimes. She felt a bit tipsy on the walk back to their hotel, and found herself thankful that the university putting them up had sprung for separate rooms. She felt like she could use the time by herself to watch reality television. 

And that’s what Hannah did when she made her way back to the hotel room. She pulled on the sweats she packed and flipped on a rerun of RuPaul’s Drag Race.

She was tired. 

She was lonely. 

….She was getting a phone call. 

“Hello?”

“Hi Hannah.”

Her heart stopped. 

Zoe.

* * *

 

“Sorry for calling so late,” Zoe said awkwardly. “I was expecting to get your voicemail. Even though you hate them.”

“I do. Hate voicemails.” There was a pause. “Why are you calling me, Zoe?” 

Zoe imagined Hannah was thinking about the last time they’d seen each other. Zoe had been drunk, drugged, and downright horrible to her. “I wanted to… apologize.”

“Apologize?”

“Yes,” Zoe said breathlessly. “I was…. I was horrible to you. And I’m so sorry.”

Hannah laughed, this unusual, sharp sound. It wasn’t like her. “Is that… is that all?”

“No,” Zoe said. Because it wasn’t. Because Hannah… was important, and Zoe had screwed that up. She’d fucked it up so badly. “No it’s not. I just… I’m just so fucking sorry, Hannah. For everything. For shutting you out, for acting like I did. You deserve so much better than that. And what happened to me… was no excuse.”

“No. It wasn’t.” Hannah’s voice was firm, unshakable. “I get that you were hurting and scared, but… You were cruel.”

“I was,” Zoe agreed, quietly. “You’re right… I was.”

“You broke my heart,” Hannah said quietly. “And then you disappeared…”

“I know,” Zoe said. “I just… couldn’t see outside of myself. And that doesn’t excuse what I did, at all. I know that. And you’re allowed to be angry at me. I know I would be, if the situation was reversed.”

“But it wasn’t. It’s not reversed.”

“I know. I know.”

The line went silent. 

“Thank you,” Zoe said then, “For answering the phone. I would have understood if you hadn’t.”

“Yeah.”

“If you… if you ever want to talk,” Zoe said. “But understand if you don’t. You… You can just… call me. Or text me. If you want. No pressure. Just… yeah.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

 

Zoe took a shuddering breath.

The call hadn’t gone badly, exactly. But it hadn’t gone great. Not that she expected it to go great. She had fucked up with Hannah. She left her and downplayed their relationship and said horrible things, and none of that was going to go away just because she said sorry. 

But at least… at least she said sorry. 

That was… a start. It was something.

* * *

 

On the morning of the first anniversary of her mother’s death… 

Zoe went to work. 

Gus had told her she could take the day off, but Zoe came to work.  " Are you sure you want to be doing working today?” He asked her. 

“Are you?” Zoe said. Because one year ago, Evan Hansen handed Gus over to DYAD. Because one year ago, Evan listened to Larry Fucking Murphy and it all went to hell. 

Dr. Green said it was totally normal to be as angry at her dead father as she was. And Zoe didn’t have a medical degree, so she believed him. But being angry at a ghost was about as effective as screaming at a pillow. 

Eventually you just got tired because nothing changed. 

At least when all of her anger was focused on Evan, she could imagine an inevitable confrontation. She could wish suffering on him, she could pray he was wracked with guilt every moment of every day for the rest of his life. 

But with her dad?

Zoe didn’t even know if she believed anything happened after you died, but if Hell was real she didn’t think she was capable of wishing him there. 

Zoe looked back at Gus, waiting for his answer. 

He nodded. “I want to be working.”

“Then me too. Put me in, coach.”

Gus wrinkled his nose at her. “This is not a sport.”

“I’d say dog grooming is totally a sport. Remember last week, when Mr. Sprinkles the Great Dane got off his leash and it took both of us and his human to get him to come back and stop chasing bicycles? That’s a sport dude.”

Gus laughed at her. 

 

Zoe got a text from Sveta that afternoon, which said, “Thinking about you today.” She had offered prayers in the past, but seemed to know that the whole God thing sort of squicked Zoe out these days. 

Another thing she spent a lot of time talking to Dr. Green about. 

He called it a crisis of faith, and Zoe had scoffed saying she thought she’d already done that with her militant atheist phase freshman year. “I already did the whole, there-is-no-God song, everything is meaningless thing.”

“That’s not necessarily what I mean,” Dr. Green said patiently. “The way you believed the world to be had been radically shaken. You’re not sure if you believe the same things. The whole God question is a part of that.”

Zoe shook her head. “But that’s the thing, I was raised Catholic. We’re just meant to accept that God like has a plan or whatever. But I can’t like… think that way. There’s no fucking intelligent design happening in a world where there’s human cloning and hitmen for scientists.”

Dr. Green nodded. “You know, in some religious traditions, questioning faith and tradition is an expected part of the identity.”

“I know,” Zoe said. “My ex is Jewish.” She laughed a little. “Her mom always said Catholics make good Jews.”

Dr. Green smiled. 

Regardless of all of the god-stuff, Zoe was glad to know Sveta was thinking of her. She also knew that Sveta understood, to a degree. Every year, she told Zoe, she tried to spend the anniversary of the day she went to court against the men who trafficked her alone. She said it helped her to spend the day away from Sofia especially; when the trial occurred, Sveta had been seven months pregnant. She said she wanted time where she could deal with that anger and rage where it couldn’t hurt her child. 

Zoe got that. 

She and Gus watched Sofia that day. They took her to the park, then to the toy store where they let her pick out one toy for herself and one toy to be donated. Sofia had a good day, and Sveta looked better in the morning.

Zoe got it. But she also knew she didn’t want to be alone that day. 

Which was why, somehow, she had agreed to spend the evening with Gus and Connor. She was pretty nervous about it. Other than a few phone calls, Zoe hadn’t seen him since Christmas. 

She got to Gus’s apartment and chewed her fingernails, staring at the buzzer button beside the door which read “27 - Gus Sadler.” 

She just had to push the button.

She just had to go upstairs. 

...She could really use a fucking drink.

“Come on Murphy,” Zoe mumbled to herself. “Get it together.” She took a deep breath, then leaned in to press the button. Normally she’d just let herself in, but she’d rather make a point to announce herself in case Connor was already there.

“Hey.”

Zoe screamed and whipped around, almost comically, hands instinctively whipping out her pepper spray from her bag.  Connor frowned at her, shoving his hand into his pocket. Zoe spotted a bag with the name of a donut shop in the side in his other hand.  “Sorry.”

Zoe’s heart was beating a little too fast, but she didn’t fly into a panic attack like she might have a few months ago. “It’s fine,” She said, her voice still raspy. “I… Hi.”

“Hi.” He looked miserable. Zoe almost felt bad for him. 

“Should we go upstairs?”

He nodded. Zoe just used her keys this time, letting herself in, Connor right behind her. They took the elevator up to Gus’s apartment, and then Zoe led the way down the hall, knocking twice before letting them inside. 

“Gus, Pampushka! Hi, we’re here.”

Pampushka rushed out to greet them, jumping up on Zoe and licking her face before excitedly heading over to Connor, her tail wagging enthusiastically. 

“Hey girl,” Connor said, rubbing her ears. “Where’s the boss, huh?”

Zoe blinked in surprise. 

_She_ said that. That was her thing.

Weird.

Gus appeared, his phone to his ear, waving. He said something in Ukrainian, then nodded to himself, said something else, and hung up. “Sveta,” he explained. “She calls to check in on you both.”

Zoe sighed. “Nice of her.”

Gus started to say something to Connor, but he was interrupted by Connor pulling him into a tight hug.  Zoe frowned a little. That was…  She guessed that really, she hadn’t seen Connor and Gus actually together that much since last year. Maybe this was normal.

Maybe Connor needed a fucking hug. She didn’t know. Her insides burned with shame a little; when Gus first asked her to do this, she’d caustically spat, “Well why doesn’t he just spend the day with _Evan_?”

And Gus had said, sadly, that Evan was pretty withdrawn. That Connor seemed especially lonely. That he lost his parents last year too. 

Gus didn’t say it like he was trying to guilt trip her, either, which somehow made Zoe feel worse.

Gus let Connor hang on tightly to him for a long moment, then clapped him on the back and said they ought to order something to eat. “I brought donuts,” Connor said sort of lamely. 

Gus beamed at that, picking up the bag and taking it into the kitchen. He sort of guided Connor into the kitchen, an arm around his shoulders, and sat him at the table before producing a menu for the local Chinese takeout place. 

It was weird as fuck seeing her brother cling tightly to someone who looked exactly like him. And also sort of sad… Zoe wondered distantly who was keeping an eye on Connor. She had assumed Evan, since frankly that was the least he could fucking do if he was going to claim sole custody of Connor… 

But since he wasn’t?

Well. 

That… sucked. 

Gus kept a hand on Connor’s shoulder as they discussed what to eat. Like maybe he needed moral support to actually eat something…

Zoe hated that. 

Zoe had been like that, less than two months ago. Her clothes were finally starting to fit her again. 

This was hard to watch. 

Zoe volunteered, a bit awkwardly and loudly, to place the order (and pay, though she kept that to herself), just to give her brothers a minute alone. 

“That’s a lot of wontons,” The person she placed the order with said, laughing a little. “Having a party?”

“Something like that yeah,” Zoe said. Maybe more like a pity party. 

It was weird, she realized, to think about how similar this was to her mom’s tradition of doing something nice for themselves on Connor’s birthday. A distraction. 

Maybe there was something to that after all. 

She thought that her mom would approve of this new tradition. Though maybe not the Chinese food.

“Food should be like twenty minutes,” Zoe announced, walking back into the kitchen. Connor was smiling a little bit, but it vanished when she walked into the room. 

“Shall we watch Handsome Funny John while we wait?” Gus asked. Zoe and Connor both nodded gratefully. Apparently talking face to face was something they weren’t really ready for yet. Gus queued up  _ New In Town,  _ taking a seat between Zoe and Connor on the sofa. Pampushka curled up at their feet. 

By the time they reached John Mulaney’s bit about Delta Airlines, both Zoe and Connor had actually started to laugh. Zoe always liked that part. She quoted it to Hannah all the time; it only got worse after Hannah flew Delta to visit her grandma in Florida over winter break last year and ended up with a seven hour delay due to the lavatory light being out. 

Zoe called her from her mom’s sofa to sing “life is a fucking nightmare” right as Hannah finally boarded the plane. 

With a jolt, Zoe realized, distantly, that she hadn’t spent the whole day obsessing about her mom. And wondered if that was… okay. 

Before she could probe that line of thinking further, the delivery person buzzed Gus’s apartment. He stood up to let them in, leaving Zoe and Connor alone in his apartment with Pampushka in front of a paused John Mulaney special. 

“How are-?”

“Are you-?”

Zoe and Connor both stopped, each saying sorry and looking away. 

“You go,” Zoe said. 

“How are you?”

She shrugged. “Better than I thought I’d be.” She pulled a hand through her hair. “Are you okay?”

He shook his head. “I dunno, I just… It’s been. Hard.”

“Yeah.”

Gus returned with food. Dinner was mostly quiet, the three of them watching John Mulaney and chewing. Zoe didn’t bother trying to make chopsticks happen, getting up instead to grab herself a fork. She found herself grabbing a second, because growing up neither she or Connor had ever mastered using chopsticks, but when she looked into the living room, Connor was using chopsticks just fine.

She frowned a little… It was stupid to be upset that somewhere in the last four years, her brother learned to use some fucking chopsticks. 

But it seemed weirdly emblematic of all of the things Zoe just didn’t know about him anymore. And she hated that she didn’t know him. 

Growing up she hated that he knew her so well, because he could always get under her skin. 

Now they didn’t know each other and that… sucked. 

She hated that. 

She hated a lot of things, but in this moment, watching her brother with his brother, eating lo mein with chopsticks, Zoe was acutely aware of how much she hated that they couldn’t just… make this work. Be a family. 

She wished she could just ask for a do over. When they were kids and Connor beat her at, like, CandyLand or whatever, Zoe always begged for a do over. She always wanted another chance, another shot. 

She knew there weren’t any do overs in real life. 

But maybe they could try… or something. Whatever. She was getting emotional about chopsticks. She’d hit critical mass for feelings for the rest of the day.

* * *

 

After they finished eating and finished watching  _ New In Town,  _ Gus queued up  _ The Comeback Kid  _ without needing to be asked. Zoe relaxed a little. 

Connor chuckled a few times at the bit about real estate, which made Gus laugh and Zoe too. 

“I like this part, although I am not understanding,” Gus said, still chuckling. “Why is the garbage can on fire? I watch many times and do not know.”

Connor explained that he thought it was to really show how ill suited the place was for becoming a nursery. Gus grinned, laughing again. “Thank you for patient explanation.”

Connor smiled a little to himself. “You’re welcome Gus.”

They paused the special because Gus decided that Zoe looked like she could use some tea. 

She liked this about Gus; he always just seemed to understand what she needed.

They resumed after all three of them had drunk some tea.

What  _ they _ needed, Zoe corrected herself a minute later. Both her and Connor. Gus had made the tea claiming it was for her, but it was for Connor too, she thought. She realized Connor had put his head on Gus’s shoulder. 

Weird. 

It was weird. 

But it was… also sort of nice. 

Connor passed out somewhere around the bit about  _ Back to the Future.  _

Gus turned the volume down a little. “Connor has not been sleeping well, I think.”

Zoe nodded. She’d noticed the bags under his eyes when he first got there. 

“I’m glad you invited him,” Zoe said. “And me. I... I really appreciated this. Tonight.” 

Gus squeezed her hand. “It is a good time to spend with family.”

“And Handsome Funny John.”

“He is both handsome and funny,” Gus said, smiling a little. 

“I sure hope Joe doesn’t get jealous of your crush on John.”

Gus shook his head, his cheeks a bit pink. “I believe Joe would understand. Handsome Funny John… he is a silly thing.”

That was accurate, Zoe thought to herself, taking in John Mulaney’s gangly form. “Did I tell you that Sofia thinks that Pampushka is Rory’s girlfriend?”

Gus snorted. “They are _dogs_.”

“She just watched  _ Lady and the Tramp _ . She wants to feed them spaghetti.”

Gus laughed softly. “I think it is more likely that Bellatrix is Pampuska’s girlfriend,” he said, grinning. 

Zoe smiled. Bellatrix was a border collie who had taken a shine to Pampushka in the dog park lately. She would always run up to Pampushka immediately, and her owner (a bookish lesbian named Maria who admitted she hadn’t named the dog but gained custody when she separated with her ex) had jokingly started to call the dogs Gal Pals. Especially after Pampushka licked Bellatrix's nose once.

Zoe had explained to Gus that "gal pals" was code for girls who dated, because people liked to pretend that girls never dated each other. And he thought that was ridiculous, and immediately sent a picture to Connor and Seamus of the pair that said “Gal Pals!!!”

It cracked Zoe up. And would probably greatly disappoint Sofia.

Connor woke back up as Zoe was discussing the Monica Lewinsky scandal with Gus. He thought it was pretty nuts that the poor intern got all of the blame for the scandal. "Mr. Clinton was the president, should he not be the one who takes the blame?"

"Always knew you were a feminist, Gus."

“Sorry,” Connor mumbled. "I fell asleep."

“Is okay,” Gus said, patting Connor’s knee, smiling. “You barely drooled.”

Connor narrowed his eyes. 

“I joke,” Gus said warmly. “You need sleep, Connor. You know you must take better care of yourself.”

He looked away awkwardly, nodding. 

At that point, Gus announced that they ought to get some sleep. “You are both staying, yes?”

Zoe nodded, and Connor nodded, and before long Gus was making them more tea and they were all sitting on the sofa in their pajamas. Zoe realized with a start that she could barely tell the two of them apart when they were both in their soft sleeping clothes. 

They were so alike. And so different. And she never would have imagined that Connor would have someone like Gus. Someone so kind but tough and willing to look out for him. 

For three years Zoe thought he was dead, but he found a family.

And Zoe lost hers.

Pampushka whined a little, putting her head on Zoe’s knee. 

“Thanks,” Zoe said softly, setting down her mug and rubbing the dog’s head. She had teared up. A hand rested on her shoulder, and Zoe cried harder. 

Gus pulled her in for a hug, and Zoe cried into his t-shirt. He petted her hair, and Zoe realized that he was crying too. 

He wasn’t Gus, Zoe realized. 

He was Connor. 

But she didn’t pull away. She didn’t spew insults or feel disgust. She just. 

There was some comfort in having someone to be miserable with, someone who felt the same pain she did. 

“I’m… I’m so sorry Zo. For everything. I’m so fucking sorry.”

Zoe pulled away. Wiped her eyes. “You’re an asshole.”

“I know.”

“You… you picked Evan over me…”

“That’s… I  _ never _ wanted to do that. I just thought… I just...” Connor was properly crying now, and Zoe…

God she was still so angry. 

But. 

Her brother looked so sad, so broken. So she hugged him. She let him cry on her shoulder. 

“I’m sorry,” Connor said, pulling away, wiping his eyes, head bowed. “I’m sorry, I don’t have any right to…” He looked away. “You don’t have to… to talk to me, or whatever.”

“I know I don’t have to,” Zoe said. “But I am. Talking. To you.”

“I feel like…” Connor said, and Zoe could tell he was crying again. “It’s not fair for me, to… to miss them. It’s not fair to you. I left. I let you all think… I fucked up and I… I don’t have any right to miss them but I do.”

Zoe pulled Connor’s hand into hers. “Those things I said… I. I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t… you were-”

“An asshole,” Zoe said, interrupting. “I was an asshole to you, and Hannah and Gus…. And Evan. I was hurting and sad but I. The things I said. I shouldn’t have said what I said. I took my anger out on the wrong people.”

“Who are you really angry at then?” 

“Dad, for starters,” Zoe said, eyes welling up again. “That motherfucker went on a suicide mission for literally no reason. And I… I’m so pissed at him. I feel like all I’ve talked about in therapy for weeks is how pissed I am at him. And how annoying it is to be angry at a dead person, one who is actually dead, because you can’t do anything with it.”

“You’re in therapy?” Connor said in a small voice. 

“I thought Gus would have told you.”

“Just that you were doing better and helping him at work,” Connor said, “He’s annoying that way.”

“Gus is so great,” Zoe said. “You’re lucky to have him.”

“You have him too,” Connor mumbled. 

Zoe blinked a few times. “You’re jealous?”

Connor looked at her miserably. “He’s… he’s my family. My twin. And… I…”

“You never were good at sharing.”

Connor laughed, but it sounded a bit like he was crying. Or maybe he was just crying. Zoe didn’t know. She just sat there, holding her brother’s hand. 

Eventually, Zoe heard the door open, and Gus came back inside with Pampushka. Zoe hadn’t noticed that they left. She assumed he had taken her for a walk. 

“Hello,” he said, smiling slightly. “I see you talked.”

“We did,” Connor said. He stood up, crossing the room and pulling Gus into a tight hug. “Thank you.”

Zoe stood up, waited for them to pull apart. “Thank you. Both of you…. For not letting me be alone today.”

Gus pulled Zoe into a hug. And Connor joined in, and she found herself in a strange sandwich hug between her two brothers. 

Considering the circumstances, it was probably the best she could have hoped for today.

* * *

 

Zoe was camped out on the sofa. Connor and Gus were sleeping in Gus’s room (Zoe knew that they often bunked up, even when not strictly necessary). Gus had said, maybe a little wearily, that he might need to invest in a pull out sofa as he pulled out an unbelievably soft blanket and squashy pillow for Zoe. 

She wanted to sleep, but it just wasn’t happening. She was drowsy and exhausted from all of the crying and laughing and not checking out mentally that the day had brought, but sleep remained far away. 

So like any decent person on the cusp of twenty one, Zoe checked her phone. 

She had a text from Hannah. She was so startled that she dropped the phone on her face. 

“Hey, sorry I’m sending this to you late, I’m flying back from London today. I just wanted to tell you that you’ve been on my mind today. I hope you’re doing okay.”

Zoe realized the text was barely five minutes old. She tapped back a reply. “Thanks so much for texting. I know things between us have been a mess, and it really means a lot to me that you texted.”

Hannah’s reply was almost instant: “Of course.”

“Why were you in London?” Zoe asked.

“School thing. Are you still awake?”

“Obviously.”

It took a minute for Hannah to reply to that. “Can I call you?”

Zoe called the moment she read the words. It only rang once. “Hey,” Zoe said breathlessly when she heard the line pick up. 

“Hey.”

“I’m so glad you texted,” Zoe said. “Really, it means a lot…”

“Zoe…”

“Yeah?”

“I’m still really really upset with you.”

“I know.”

“And this doesn’t mean that everything between us is okay.”

“Of course not.”

“But I miss you… a lot. All the time, in fact.”

Zoe thought she might have stopped breathing for a moment. 

“Would you… I’m going to be in Boston next weekend. I’m checking in at the ERAS office on a few things, and… Would you want to get coffee? And talk?”

“I would love that. Honestly.”

“Great. Then it’s a date.”

“Great.” Zoe smiled really hard. “What was the school thing in London?”

“Oh,” Hannah said, her voice getting a little quieter. “It’s just that both Cambridge and Oxford are trying to um… to recruit me? For grad school… So I was in England to visit. Tour. I brought Dan and my mom. Spring Break and all. None of us had ever been to London before, so we spent the last few days in London. We saw a West End show and did a lot of sightseeing. Daniel loved it.”

“That sounds… amazing.”

“It was… we even had lunch at The Eagle? The pub in Cambridge where Watson and Crick announced that they had discovered DNA. It was cool.”

“That is cool. I hope you made a big stink about them ripping off Rosalind Franklin.”

“You bet I did.”

“That’s my girl.”

There was a slight pause. “I should let you go,” Hannah said. “It’s late.”

“Yeah.”

“It was… so good to talk to you, Zoe.”

“You too.”

* * *

 

Zoe Murphy had a binder full of legal documents, the name of a realtor, and a foolproof business plan (at least according to her financial advisor). 

Sitting across from her in the Starbucks where Zoe had met Gus for coffee, he looked… gobsmacked. “I cannot… This is too much.”

“No,” Zoe said. “Trust me when I say that it’s not. This is a solid plan, my financial guy said so. You’ve already established a decent clientele base through the grooming business, which we could work into the daycare model. The financial risk for me is pretty small, considering.” Zoe smiled at him. “I know how much you want this, and I want to help.”

Gus frowned, paging through the packet of documents already. “You have found potential locations already?”

“I’ve booked times to see them too. Next week during off hours? The relator’s card is stapled to the top of the list.”

“You worked hard on this.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Zoe shrugged. “I just… you’ve done a lot for me, these last few months. I appreciate it a lot, and… I just want to do something for you.”

Gus looked back down at the papers. “I can’t take this money-”

“Gus, I-”

“I cannot just… take this money. It will be a loan. We will draw up a repayment plan.”

Zoe rolled her eyes. “I’m offering you the start up money outright.”

“And I will accept a loan.”

“Fine,” Zoe said, smiling. “Deal.”

“Deal.”

They shook hands. 

“I should not have let you buy these coffees,” Gus said, looking a little grumpy. 

Zoe just smiled at him. She didn’t care what loan paperwork she signed, Zoe wouldn’t take a dime from Gus.

* * *

 

Just before summer started,  Zoe moved out of her apartment. Broke her lease and everything.

Her neighbors hated her anyway. And she hated the apartment. The only decorations she had ever put up were the drawings Sofia had made. 

Zoe hired movers, but it didn’t stop Gus from showing up with Pampushka, Sveta, and Sofia to help her unpack. 

“I brought you a gift. To warm your house.”

Zoe grinned brilliantly, opening the gift to see a painting of a starry night sky, with three small figures observing it from below. It was gorgeous. She beamed at Gus. “Thank you… I love it.”

“You always used to draw stars on your jeans.”

Zoe whipped around, surprised to see Connor standing in the doorway, smiling awkwardly, a shopping bag in his hands.  

“I didn’t think you would come.”

Connor frowned, just for a second. “I couldn’t miss the unpacking party. Besides, I brought food.” He gave her a smile. “Can I come in?”

Zoe nodded, waving Connor inside. “Did Gus already show you the painting?” She asked. 

“He sent me hourly updates on it,” Connor said, smiling fondly at Gus. “He was excited.”

“I really love it,” Zoe said, looking at Gus. “Really.” 

“Very good! I am very glad.”

“I um. I brought something else,” Connor said, smiling sort of sheepishly. 

“Donuts?” Zoe said, “Because all I see are bagels in this bag…”

“No, um-”

“Hi.”

Zoe whipped around, her heart suddenly beating extremely fast. 

Hannah was standing in the doorway. “Sorry to like… crash the party.”

Zoe couldn’t take her eyes off of Hannah. She looked… good. Solid. Better than she looked the handful of times they had grabbed coffee or Facetimed. Even though her fingers were twisted in the hem of her shirt. Even though her smile looked really nervous. She was still smiling. She still wore her beat up Chucks. Her ears and cheeks still went pink at the sight of Zoe. 

“Hi,” She said breathlessly. “What are you…? I didn’t…” She looked suddenly back at Connor, and then at Hannah. “You’re  _ here _ .”

“I thought… I mean, I can go if it’s too much or-”

Zoe pulled Hannah into a tight hug. She really wanted to kiss her, but she thought that maybe a hug was more appropriate. “Thank you. I’m so glad you’re here.”

“It was Connor’s idea,” Hannah said softly, hugging Zoe back very tightly. Hannah wasn’t a hugger, by nature, so Zoe especially appreciated this. This was a good sign. It had to be a good sign. 

When they pulled apart, Zoe gave Connor a hug too. “Thank you.”

Gus was hugging Hannah when Zoe pulled away. And Sofia gave Sveta a hug, announcing she would like hugging too. 

“I thought this was unpack party, not hug party,” Sveta said with a laugh. 

Zoe pulled Hannah over to introduce her to Sveta and Sofia. Sveta smiled super brightly when Zoe said she was her friend. Zoe thought the fact that Sveta had started off as her cleaning lady wasn’t especially relevant.

Sofia especially seemed super interested in Hannah. Zoe assumed it was because this was the first time she’d ever encountered a butch woman before. She glanced around the room and realized that, well, everyone other than Hannah had fairly lengthy hair. Maybe Sofia just… never saw short haircuts.  “I like your hair,” she said smiling. “It’s so short!”

“I like to keep it short,” Hannah said shrugging. 

“How come?”

“It takes less time to brush it then.”

This made Sofia laugh. “I hate brushing my hair.”

Sofia asked if she could touch Hannah’s hair, so Hannah bent down and let her. Sofia marveled at how soft the shortest hair in the back was. “I thought it would prickle, like when mama doesn’t shave her legs sometimes.”

Sveta looked embarrassed and muttered something quietly to Sofia in Ukrainian. 

“Can I tell you a secret,” Hannah said. 

“Hmm?”   


“I don’t shave my legs either. They’re super prickly.” She flashed a prickly ankle at Sofia, which made her crack up laughing. Sveta seemed to relax a little. 

The group dove into unpacking. Sveta and Zoe organized the kitchen (and Sveta swore she was going to come and give Zoe proper cooking lessons. Apparently the time Zoe attempted to make pancakes and started a grease fire on her stove was still fresh in everyone’s mind). 

“I do not believe your mother did not teach you,” Sveta said. 

“Oh she did,” Zoe said, smiling fondly. “She was just an awful cook.” She caught Connor’s eye from where he was unloading a box of books for the bookshelf Gus had reassembled in her living room. 

“Where did Hannah and Sofia end up?” Zoe asked after a little while. 

“Bedroom, I think,” Connor said. 

Zoe nodded, heading in that direction. She hadn’t even thought about unpacking her room yet. She fully intended to fall asleep on top of a pile of clothes that night. 

“Knock knock,” Zoe said, knocking on her new door. “Can I come in?”   


“Just a second!” Sofia’s little voice called. There were some whispers, and then Sofia pulled the door open. “TADA!” She shouted. 

Admittedly, Zoe was… super touched. Hannah (and Sofia, she supposed) had unpacked her bedding and set up her bed. Several framed pictures hung on the walls (Zoe’s high school graduation, the picture of her parents’ wedding day, the photo of her and Connor on the first day of Kindergarten but neither of them could ever remember  _ whose _ ). Sofia’s drawings were all tacked on the wall by her calendar. 

“You guys didn’t have to do this.”

“I know,” Hannah said. “But now at least you’ll have a nice place to sleep tonight.”

“Yeah.”

Sofia scampered off to brag to her mom about the decorating. “Where are you sleeping tonight?” Zoe asked Hannah. 

“Evan offered to let me stay.”

Zoe’s guts still twisted at his name. She still couldn’t bring herself to forgive him. 

“Unless you…” Hannah’s face flushed. “Nevermind.”

“Unless I what?”

“Nevermind. We’re… taking this slowly. We said we’d be friends and go from there and I don’t want to push… So. Nevermind.”

“Okay,” Zoe said, nodding. She got it. She understood. They couldn’t just jump back in where they left off. So much had changed. Zoe had really hurt Hannah while they were apart. It wouldn’t be fair to assume that she wanted that. “I get it. I mean. I fucked up, like, a lot with you. I really did. I just… I’m sorry. About that.”

“I mean… you did,” Hannah said, nodding. “But… it’s not like you woke up on a random Wednesday and decided to be cruel to me. You… The situation was a mess. I’m not saying that you get a pass or whatever… but you could cut yourself a little bit of slack. You’ve been working really hard not to be that way. You’ve… you’ve gotta give yourself a break. Just a little one.”

Zoe nodded. It was… 

She had spent a long time now trying to put together the right words to show Hannah that she was sorry and that she meant it. That she was in another place. That she was genuinely doing better now. 

But of course… Hannah already knew. She was smart like that. Always one step ahead of Zoe about her own wants and needs. 

“Thank you. For saying that.”

Hannah smiled. “Of course. I still love you, you know. It’s just… complicated right now.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry. About bringing up staying at Evan’s. I know that made it weird.”

Zoe shrugged. “If you wanted to stay here… we could set up the couch or something. No agenda or whatever. Just… if you wanted.”

Hannah’s ears went pink. “I’d like that.”

“Okay.”

They grinned at each other. Maybe they were… kind of staring. At each other. Looking into each other’s eyes and whatever. Zoe distantly realized that Hannah had taken her hand. 

Gus cleared his throat, and Zoe realized everyone else had crowded around to see what Sofia and Hannah had done to decorate Zoe’s room. Sofia tugged at Gus’s sleeve, saying something in Ukrainian and he nodded at her, smiling and giving her a little wink. 

“Oh,” Hannah said, recovering faster than Zoe. “Come look at the art that Sofia made! We hung it all up.”

Connor laughed a little, and Sveta rolled her eyes at him. 

Zoe felt extremely warm, and happy, surrounded by these people. In her new home. 

Home. 

She hadn’t felt that in a long time. A long, long time. Like she was home somewhere. 

Hannah smiled at her, her cheeks all pink. 

Zoe looked around this room with her family. She felt at home. She felt whole, or as close to it as she’d felt in ages. 

There were a lot of things that weren’t okay. Things that were broken and things that were missing and parts of her that didn’t fit the way that they used to fit. 

But. 

She was home. 

 

“Connor,” Zoe said later, when they all gathered around a pizza Zoe had ordered for dinner. “Do you know what Sofia said to Gus earlier? In Ukrainian?”

Connor looked thoughtful, still chewing a piece of pizza. He swallowed. Cleared his throat. “Keeping in mind that most of what I know in Ukrainian are swear words… I think she said love. I think that was the word for love.”

Zoe grinned, looking over toward Hannah who was talking animatedly to Sofia about how Sofia really wanted to know things about how bodies worked. “Mama says the bodies are made up of little tiny pieces.”

“She’s totally right,” Hannah said, smiling. “Everything in your body is made up of super tiny parts called cells. They’re so small you can’t even see them without a microscope. And those cells? They’re made up of all these even smaller parts. And all of that comes from this stuff called DNA? It’s sort of like… You know how sometimes when your mom cooks something, she follows a recipe?”

Sofia nodded. 

“It’s a little bit like that. The DNA is the recipe for each cell. And each cell has a job. The DNA tells them what their job is.”

“Woah.”

“I know, it’s pretty cool right? And all those cells in your body make your heart beat and your blood pump and your brain think.”

Zoe appreciated that Hannah didn’t delve into the details of how DNA made you related. Because honestly… it didn’t really matter. Connor had identical DNA to the man who had their mother killed; Gus shared DNA with everyone he had been raised to destroy. 

DNA wasn’t really all that important in Zoe’s mind. It used to be, but… well. 

There were far more important things than sharing blood. In fact, she realized, blood was about the last thing she cared about right now. 

These people in her new place? That was family. 

That was home. 

It wasn’t so bad, she thought. All things considered. It wasn’t so bad. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for sticking with this fic. Extra thanks to Rose for letting me come and play in her world for a while. I've enjoyed writing this so much, you have no idea. :)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Everybody Lost Somebody" by Bleachers.


End file.
